again.
‘Give me a hug.’
It was so American, so casual and innocent, that I had to hold him. His body felt the same, but it was softer, older – a body which did not have the tautness of desire, but had known love and the gentleness of wife and children, safe house, a big golden dog to walk to the woods.
We disentangled, and he smiled at me. It began to rain, and we went our different ways without looking back. It was too late to ask him ‘What did you do?’ Nor did he question me: ‘What have you become?’ or ‘Do you still live in the same house?’ Perhaps it was because we understood that our worlds could not meet, that in our tenuous and placid worlds the other was only a shadow.
My work on Carson McCullers had come to a standstill. I had no way of deciphering the silences in the narratives. McCullers had lived the world I had known and felt as a child.
I had read her short stories over and over again, and all the poignancy of childhood, of unutterable desires, of loneliness and of wanting, came back to me. I had a McCullers complex, and it ran deep. I applied for a grant and went to a university town in America. No, I told myself, it’s not in the hope of seeing Karan again, it’s just a coincidence that I know he lives there too.
The city I lived in during that summer was large and open and cold. Brownstone buildings, no trees. Billboards. Greek cafes. Bookshops and an aquarium, with an eleven-dollar entrance fee where I would go when I was lonely to look at the fish, and be crushed in the whirlpool of people. It saved me from the alienation of the neutral city. Americans had children. I realised this when I went to the aquarium. I suppose, in my heart, I hoped that I would meet my childhood friend again, his beautiful wife with the yellow hair and the children who looked like his mother from Jullundar. Where else, living in a city which didn’t really respect children, would he take them?
Then one day, I saw them. It was exactly as I had imagined. He was carrying his daughter aloft on his shoulder, safe from the crowds; his wife and son were behind, carrying bags of popcorn and wild-coloured umbrellas. It was raining outside, their hair was shining with rain drops in the blue dark, the artificial underwater world of the aquarium.
‘Karan!’ I said, ‘Do you remember me?’ I was good at subterfuge.
‘Elizabeth! Of course, meet my wife Gina, and these are my kids. What brings you here? Where are you staying?’
‘At the University.’
‘Here? You’re on a trip?’
‘I live here.’
His wife looked at me, and smiled, and held my hands, and said, ‘You must come for lunch on Sunday. It’s not often that Karan meets friends from India.’
‘I’d love to, but I’m leaving for home tomorrow, for Kerala. You remember my home country, Karan.’
‘Yes, I took Gina there soon after we were married – boat rides across the backwater and all that. But then it rained – like mad – and we could find nothing that she could eat except bananas. It’s wild rain forest, your homeland. I never imagined. I couldn’t cope with those spiders though. You’re leaving tomorrow? That’s a pity. We must keep in touch.’
He gave me his glossy visiting card, and his children, standing there, smiled and smiled at me, while his wife chattered about English studies and India. Neither of them had heard of McCullers and thought her a man. We walked together around the glass cases of the aquarium where large and well fed sharks swam in circles and in boredom, looking at us with dull-mirror eyes, wishing they were hungry and the sea was open.
Karan and I looked at each other when one circle around the alive and entombed fish was done, and the floodgates of memory opened again. The crowds separated us from his family.
‘You still love me, don’t you? I should have waited.’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I said, wiping my tears, carefully, in case the colours smudged.
‘You’re not. You always were a terrible liar. You came here looking for me. This is your idea of revenge. Well, this time, it’s goodbye,’ and he strode away back to the waiting half circle on the other side of the exhibits.
It was raining again, as my taxi left the city down the dark and gleaming roads. I would be back in the Fall, I had a teaching fellowship in New York, but meanwhile I would accept Benjamin’s offer of marriage. I would go back to the old cardamom estate, and to my father’s brother who would ask for Benjamin on my family’s behalf, for me. Ben had waited too long.
* * *
Benjamin’s estate was next to ours, and our families had always planned that we should marry. He had waited for me – waited and waited, I should say – but I was so hopelessly in love with Karan that it seemed that I would never come out of it. But now I had. I felt I had. When I told my Uncle that I was ready to marry, he laughed and said, ‘You’re thirty. Who shall I ask?’
‘Benjamin,’ I said.
‘Benjamin? But he was married last summer when you went to America. Why did you go? He asked you to stay.’
‘Oh hell,’ I said, involuntarily. We don’t speak like that in front of our uncles.
‘Don’t be silly, Eli. You shouldn’t talk like that. We’ll find someone else. Lucky that you have property or else it would have been impossible, even if you were ten years younger which you’re not. We’ll find a boy who is already in the States or in the Gulf. I’ll talk to the broker.’
‘The broker?’
‘Yes, you just pay him a commission on the dowry you plan to give at betrothal. How much are you going to give – rather, what shall we say we are giving?’
‘Uncle, I’m going back to Delhi today. I don’t think I’ll marry this summer.’
‘You really are insane. I told my brother not to over-educate you. Just look at you. Dressed like a man. Pants. Even a belt. And your buttocks showing. Can’t you pull out your shirt at least. And lipstick. Someone will think you’ve gone mad. Well, go see your grandmother. She’s been waiting to see you. I can’t drive you out to the airport today. I have work on the plantation. You go tomorrow.’
Uncle was furious. He looked at me through narrow, cynical eyes, denigrated everything I was or had done. I fled to the small dark room with its low entrance, where Grandmother lay resting. It was a pretty room, though so shadowed I could hardly see her. The smell of paddy boiling in large urns came wafting in from outside. There were small square windows with delicate white cotton drapes. I could see the workers threshing the grain. Her bed was narrow, but made of dark glossy redwood with elaborate canework at the head where she was propped up reading her Bible. I sat on the bench near the window waiting for her to look up.
‘And Jesus wept,’ she said, ending the lesson.
‘Hello, Ammachi.’
‘Eli, so you’ve come. Not even a postcard. Benjamin wanted to invite you for his marriage, but we didn’t even have your address. How can you disappear like that?’
‘I left the address with Uncle,’ I said, smiling at her. Her collarbones stood out sharp and clear from the edges of the large clean white blouse she always wore.
‘He
