were directly linked to other sources of darkness and calamity to which the twentieth century was witness. She understood that those same inchoate forces sent a cadre of secret police to arrest Issac Babel, taken from his basement in 1939 and never seen again. When his widow was asked if Babel had been executed by Stalin for political reasons or because he was a Jew, Pirozhkova answered: “It was done because he was excellent.” “The Tea Ceremony”—the story Gina Berriault dedicated to Babel—is one of the last works of fiction she completed before her death on July 15, 1999.
A Dream of Fair Women
LIKE A NIGHT sentry on the border between India and dream country, Singh, the restaurateur, watched her from the little lamplit bar, his post. Over six feet tall, he was made even taller by his emerald green turban, and his Nehru jacket was as white as Himalayan snow. Alma was the last waitress to arrive, and even though she was on time the near-miss must seem to him a portent of ruin. The most famous of roving gourmets was to be his guest this night, a man who would either place the restaurant on the map of the world or obliterate it with a few cruelly chosen words or no words at all.
The tiled cubicle restroom was still fragrant with the colognes of the other waitresses who, by arriving early and lighting the candles on all the tables, were like angels promising a celestial ending to this night. She slipped her costume on, drawing up the long cotton underskirt, smoothing the snug silk vest over her breasts, draping the red silk sari around her waist and over one shoulder, her hands weak with fear over her own night apart from the restaurant’s night. While she was at work this night, her lover would take away his possessions—a simple task, there were so few. They had agreed that the most bearable time for both was when she was not there. All afternoon she had raged against the woman he was going to, and now she could not even clear her ravaged throat to see if she still had a voice. And he had held her, he had caressed her, his face confounded. He was like someone dispatched to the ends of the earth, with no idea of what was to happen to him there.
The sitar music began its nightlong spiraling from the stereo in the alcove next to the restroom. She folded her clothes into her canvas bag, carried her coat and bag to the employees’ closet, and emerged into the opulent dark of the dining area.
Early diners waited at the bar, and over their heads he signaled her to escort them to their tables. His wife, Lila, the hostess, was in the kitchen, overseeing the preparation of the dishes to be set before the honored guest. A feast was in the making, created by the three silent Indian cooks, women of the same birdlike smallness, the same dark skin, their dark gray hair drawn back into a knot at the nape of their thin necks, their heads always bowed over their tasks.
The restaurant this night was more than ever like a stage, and, to Alma’s eyes, unforgivably deceptive. Light from the candles within the faceted glass globes on the tables glided up and down the waitresses’ saris and shimmered along their necklaces, turned ivory the waiters’ white turbans, and glinted off the engraved brass trays, large as giants’ shields, hanging on the walls. The candles set aglow the faces of the women at the tables, and she saw—more sharply than ever—how, tables apart, a room apart, women glanced at one another as if by mistake, as if indifferently, to see who was most beautiful of all.
At the bar, Singh appeared more Indian than ever, drawn up to his full height by the advent of the famous gourmet. But only Singh and the two waiters and just one of the three waitresses were authentic. None of the patrons—she was sure—suspected that he was born on a dirt farm in the San Joaquin Valley and had never set foot in India, nor that both waiters, flawless as a maharaja’s servants, were students enrolled in business administration classes, nor that the one Indian waitress—Kamala, aloof, remote—spoke street language in the kitchen, ridiculing the diners, and was a fervent belly dancer. The rest were impostors. She was one herself, her parents Chilean. Lila was from the Detroit ghetto, but Indian ancestry could easily be imagined for her large eyes, her prematurely white hair and dark skin, her thin little hands. Marlie was ghetto-born, too, but her silky, gold-flecked, flitting presence so mesmerized the patrons that two or three or four men dining together would loudly declare, for all to hear, that Indian women were the most beautiful in the world.
When Alma came to the bar with her little brass tray to order drinks, Singh was gazing out over the tables, losing his way by candlelight, his soft, dark face plump with desire.
“That woman at the corner table,” he said. “What a face! Right out of those old movies where they come down those long, curving stairs to breakfast. Who is she? She looks familiar.”
Every beautiful woman is always someone waited for and always recognized as someone seen before. Alma had never told him this notion of hers. For one reason, he wouldn’t know what she was talking about, and, for another reason, she’d be confessing a bewilderment of her own.
“Remind me,” he said, pouring drinks. “Remind me to tell you about a woman I knew in Texas. She looked like that. She almost died when I left. Why I ran out on her I don’t know. I was just a dumb kid, knocking around. I thought I had my destiny to look after. She would’ve left her husband for me. A filthy rich oilman, but she would’ve left him. In my life nothing synchronizes.”
On quiet nights, when his wife wasn’t there, and when all the diners had left, then how many intimate things he told her about the women of his past, about what pleased them in bed, what subtle artistry of his. On busy nights when his wife was there, and after the restaurant doors were closed, then the departing waiters and waitresses would pretend not to see what was going on at the bar. Lila, on a stool, was bent low over the counter, fiercely accusing him of present affairs, past ones, and those to come, while he ranged within his small space like a tiger tormented by its keeper.
At the top of the stairs, Lila was welcoming the celebrated columnist, her face endowed by that guest with a brief flare of tender, pleading beauty. Alma, waiting at the bar for a glass to be filled, saw closely how affected Singh was by the famous gourmet—a man unexpectedly brisk, trim and gray, like an executive with no time or talent for savoring—and by his companion, another familiar beauty. Their presence stole away Singh’s natural suavity, his air of reserve. He stepped out from behind the bar and, towering over the couple, shook hands with the man and bowed his head quickly to the woman, then gave them back to his wife, who led them to their table, her head high, her silk garments floating.
“What’s her name?” he asked Alma. “She’s an actress. I’ve seen her, but I can’t remember which movie.” With unusually hasty hands he concocted the third Pimm’s Cup for her tray, fumbling the long slice of cucumber.
It was in those moments of their arrival that he first appeared to have lost his wits. Alma blamed the loss on the woman of shocking beauty and on the man who could either make or break the restaurant, but, as the evening wore on, the reason for his odd behavior began to seem not so simple. On other evenings he would wander among the diners, shaking hands with steadfast patrons and with celebrities he recognized—a violinist, a comedian, an opera singer—his eyes darkening to a degree in accord with the patron’s significance out in the world, and he would chat for only the graceful length of time, longer for the lesser ones, shorter for the greater ones. But this night he remained behind the bar, gazing out to the couple at their table apart.
Hovering over the couple, Lila confided to them the ingredients of each dish as it was set down by their waiter, and the number of seconds, the number of minutes required for two and more ingredients to fuse perfectly.
“He won’t talk to them,” she complained to Alma in the kitchen, appealingly, as though Alma could persuade him, and resignedly, because the pain of this frustration was hers alone, and out she went through the swinging doors, followed by the
