Passage West

by Rishi Reddi

  In eight days’ time Shankar will come to fetch me. We will leave for Patiala and catch the train to Calcutta.

  Your loving wife,

  Padma

  2 October 1918

  My esteemed husband, Father of Santosh,

  I am writing from the Calcutta train depot and I will post this letter at the dock. It is a game I am playing . . . which will reach you first—the letter or me? Such a good game, with such a good prize.

  The journey has begun, and it feels that I have been set free. For the first time, I can feel everything. I do not have to swallow my pride in my son, or my dissatisfaction or my wish to read a book or write a poem. Oh! That home stifles me! We all live in close proximity, yet no one knows anyone’s heart! How much I missed you! How unkind the others were to me. But not my mother-in-law, dear husband. I do not mean her. She was always battling her own grief while missing you. She could not help it. She adores her grandson, and now all is being taken from her. Perhaps she too can come join us soon.

  Shankar, as always since my birth, has been my protector and my guard. Santosh runs after him, copies his gestures, his voice, eats his bananas in just the same manner. If he mimics his uncle in this way, I can only dream how he will be with you! With what adoration he will follow you!

  I must tell you, my husband, without worrying you with too much detail. In the village, they were not kind to me when I left. No one came to wish me well. It’s true I am a woman and it would not have been proper to have too much hullabaloo. But I will say only this—I was happy to climb in the buggy after my goodbyes were complete.

  It is too hot and wet here in Calcutta. Shankar tells me it will become more and more like that as we move along. I am looking out the window and thinking all the time that you saw all these same sights as you traveled across the country. I set eyes on the ocean for the first time yesterday. When I saw it, something happened to my heart, my mind—it is glorious and impossible. I cannot find words to describe it.

  I cannot wait to sail upon it—what a marvel, to float on top of an ocean! More, I cannot wait to speak with you, so that you may tell me your thoughts on everything—the camels, the wet heat, the rude conductors, the motion of the train, the ocean, our son.

  Your loving wife,

  Padma

  ON THE DAY OF PADMA’S ARRIVAL, Ram came to San Francisco alone, traveling north along the same railway that had brought him to Fredonia more than four years earlier. It seemed impossible that Padma would be with him on the way back. For these years, few things had assured him that she really existed: her letters, the photo he kept safe in his trunk, the sound of her voice that accompanied him everywhere since he first arrived, and never left him. To be with the body that belonged to that voice, to feel her warm whisper in his ear while standing on his cotton field, while eating his meals, to reach for the hand he had held as a child—impossible.

  But the boy—his boy—he did not know at all. These were real and proper feelings, he believed. His thoughts of Adela receded into the background.

  At the San Francisco train depot in late afternoon, with a December chill in the air, a ticket master directed him to the pier. He arrived there at dusk. He bought noodles from a Chinese vendor outside the terminal building and ate his dinner looking out over the wharf. The air hung wet and cold, so different from the dry wind of the Imperial Valley. Water splashed up against wooden pilings. Workers leaned against the warehouse buildings, smoking cigarettes. Gulls circled and called overhead. Several ships were in port and Anglo men, women, and children milled about the terminal building. In a corner, Negro porters gathered with their trolleys.

  The waiting area inside was commanded by a large clock hanging above a schedule board. The cavernous room held benches, a booth where one could buy peanuts or popcorn, a long ticket counter attended by ten or twelve clerks. A policeman walked past, looked at him without interest, and moved on.

  Ram walked to the schedule board and scanned the names of the ships coming into the pier.

  An elderly man approached him. He wore a suit with a pocket watch, and carried a cane. But he had the air of a vagabond. “Who you looking for, son?” he asked.

  Had Ram been squinting? Too obvious in his struggle to decipher the English? “My wife. On SS Colombia.”

  “Says it won’t be in until early morning,” the man said. There was phlegm in his voice. Something unhealthy.

  Ram was irritated. “I am seeing that,” he said.

  “Your wife isn’t in first class, is she now? They bring them onto the mainland direct if they’re first class.”

  “Steerage,” Ram answered, suddenly self-conscious of his own appearance. He had worn his nicest pants and a dress shirt to greet Padma. But he could only afford to purchase her tickets in steerage.

  “They’ll process her on the island, then. Might take hours. Tell you, though, there’s a place you might go early morning—a rock jutting into the water. There’s a small light there to warn the vessels away. Stand next to it and you can see the ship on the way to Angel Island. You’ll like it. You might even see her.” Ram asked him for directions to the rock. It was an hour’s walk down the post road. There would be a shack and a trail turning to the right, leading toward the water.

  Ram thanked him. He went to a secluded corner and stretched out on a bench, hoping the policeman would not return. Seeing the elderly man settle down on another bench close by, Ram tucked his small bag safely under his head. He placed his hat on his face but could not sleep. The excitement was too much. He would do as the man suggested and go to the rock in the morning.

  In the milky light of dawn, he followed the man’s directions to the outcropping. He was surprised by how accurate they were. Walking along the shoreline, he found the ocean unworldly. Fog drifted above the water. Sunlight cut silently through the wet chill and the ceaseless churn of the waves. When he noticed the shack, the air was just beginning to warm. He heard the occasional, uneven clang of a bell. The trail led into the cool darkness of a grove of trees, then emerged in bright sunlight at the edge of the sea. He walked out on the ragged surface of the rock, unprotected. The wind tugged at his clothing. The light stood to his left, glaring white and weather-beaten. A bell was perched at the top, twelve feet high. That was the clanging that he heard. His legs felt unsteady. His boots could not find a grip. Although he was several feet from the edge, he walked forward gingerly. The sun warmed his back. He sat against the rail of the lighthouse, the wind against his face, humbled by the sight of the water meeting the land.

  Ferries and tugboats chugged past, sails, a steamer bearing the wrong name and the flag of another country. Then he saw it, entering San Francisco bay like a dream—that was how Ram would remember it for years afterward. The fog parted and the ship appeared, the waves sweeping past the hull as if it were a sea beast, enormous. People were huddled on the deck, and—could it be?—a woman stood with a shawl gathered about her. She was next to a man, holding a black-haired child, but the child would not turn toward him. Perhaps she was too far away, but he thought he could see the shape of her shoulders, the curve of her face. It belonged to him; he was part of that curve, of that uneven way she stood.

  “Padma!” he yelled. “Padma!” But the unceasing wind smothered his voice. The woman turned away. She could not have heard, not with the wind whipping against the ship, the water parting before it, the violent hum of the sea meeting the shore.

  He watched as the ship churned past him, steam spouting from her funnels. She turned toward the land and sailed past an outcropping, beyond his view. He was suddenly filled with a great urgency. How long would it take for the officials to board the ship? For the doctors to examine passengers? How long for Padma and her brother to answer their foolish questions and prove they were literate, to pay that silly tax? Not long, or very long? Hours? Days? From his perch on the rock, he could see a ferry come to take the first-class passengers to shore. It did not matter how long it would take because, regardless, it woul
d be too long. Was it possible for her foot to touch this shore? That she would be walking, alive, alongside him?

  He returned to the pier in San Francisco, but she did not arrive that day. At nightfall he took a trolley to the old Ghadar headquarters. It was now called Yugantar Ashram, after the arrest and trial of the Indians and Germans and the murder of RamChandra Bharadwaj. Before Ram left for San Francisco, Karak had sent a telegram there on Ram’s behalf. When Ram knocked, a Bengali man allowed him inside. A Tamilian prepared his dinner plate. There were others there: three Punjabis and two Marathi who were students at the university.

  Ram slept on the floor, barely listening to their political talk. In the morning he went to the docks and waited again. The ferry carried some passengers from Angel Island. Four Hindustanees were among them, but she was not. The men were not dressed poorly, but they were tired and disheveled.

  “Have you met my brother-in-law, Shankar?” he asked them. “He is traveling with his sister, my wife.”

  “There is a small boy with them?” a turbaned man said. He spoke like a rural man, a farmer.

  “My son,” Ram said.

  “They came with us on the journey,” one of the other men said, nodding his head.

  “The boy is quite beautiful,” another said, perhaps reading the anxiety in Ram’s face. “Shankar-ji has not yet been processed. He is waiting still. I have not seen your wife since we arrived. They are keeping men and women separately.”

  “Don’t worry, brother,” the third man said.

  Ram took them with him to the ashram. He ate and slept there again. They told him more: His wife had suffered from seasickness on the journey, but she traveled well despite her cane. She had written poems about the sea and, when they insisted, had read them aloud. The men had exchanged forwarding addresses with Ram’s brother-in-law. They intended to be in touch. And the boy—at five years old, he was very mischievous, very smart. He would stare at the ocean with round eyes. So round, so dark—so curious! They had never seen eyes as black as his.

  Ram said goodbye to them the following morning, before he went again to the pier.

  That day, she still did not come. Other travelers walked from the ferry dock through the terminal doors: they had spent time on Angel Island too, coming from Tokyo, from Peru, Panama, Australia. He asked the young clerk who sat behind the immigration counter. Was there a list of people who had arrived on the SS Colombia, departing from Hong Kong?

  “Immigration don’t share the manifest list,” the young man said, his face like stone, clean-shaven and unlined. Ram wondered if he knew that the lives of the people around him depended on who was on that ship, and who was not.

  “My wife—she—” Ram said.

  “No public list—”

  “If I am giving to you her name, you can look for me?”

  The clerk glared at him as if the request was unreasonable. But he unlocked the drawer on his desk and brought out the paper. Ram gave Padma’s and Shankar’s names, spelling them out.

  “Nothing like that here,” the clerk said, running his finger down the manifest as if looking at an accounting ledger. In one quick movement, he replaced the document inside the drawer and locked it again.

  Ram felt a chill in his gut. There had been a mistake. The clerk had not looked carefully enough. The four Hindustanees had traveled with them on the voyage. Perhaps she was in quarantine. Perhaps she was ill. Perhaps she was wandering the streets of this same city, their son by her side, lost.

  The next morning, taking the trolley through a rain-soaked gray city, he went again. A different clerk sat behind the counter. For a moment, their eyes met. Ram had seen him before, in another part of the building. The terminal was less busy that morning. There were no people milling about.

  “Hey, you,” Ram heard the clerk say. He gestured for Ram to approach him. “You still looking for passengers?”

  “My wife—” Ram said.

  “You been here for most of a week and I’m tired of looking at ya.” He was balding. Wisps of gray hair floated about his head. “Here, you can see for yourself,” he said, “I’m not so good at reading these strange names.” He tossed the list across the desktop. Ram leaned over the paper. “Be quick about it.”

  “If her name is not there, what is the meaning?” Ram asked.

  “That she wasn’t on the boat, mate. Everybody on that boat is on that list.”

  Ram’s stomach clenched in fear. “If the name isn’t there, then the person didn’t come?”

  “That’s how they do.”

  But he saw her name. It had always been there, he knew now, only misspelled: Saker, male; Pudam, female, with one child. His throat went dry.

  “Why does an ‘X’ appear by their names?” he asked. “And this—‘SI’?”

  “Means they were questioned.” The clerk did not meet his eye.

  “When will they be released?” Ram could hear the alarm in his voice. “Three days have passed. It is too long.”

  The man looked at him. He was not being unkind, Ram would think later. “Steamer left this morning, mate,” the man said slowly. “Early, right at dawn. That means they were not allowed in.”

  The building swayed, as if the earth had moved beneath him. Later, he would not know why he ran. What did he think he could do? In a cold mist he arrived again at the outcropping where he had seen the ship pass on the way to the island. Of course, the ship was not there. The rain pelted his face, pooled at his collar, saturated his boots. He stood at the rock, leaning against the lighthouse rail for more than an hour.

  In despair, he walked back to the city. He was a pragmatic man; he found a telegram office. They would have to be told: his uncle in Punjab, Padma’s parents. The third one he sent to Jivan: RETURNING P.M. TRAIN TOMORROW. He returned to Yugantar Ashram.

  Years later, he would allow himself to forget his desperate return to the rock outcropping, looking for the steamer. If ever asked to tell the story, he would say, I went to collect her, and she was not there, and that was that.

  IT WAS FAMILIAR TO HIM: The mesquite, the dunes, the ocotillo, the desert, the fierce sun, the boy waving at the gate. The crooked sign at the Fredonia depot, AMERICA’S DREAM. He watched without feeling as the scene flashed past the train window. Then with anger. So much anger.

  They all came, as would have been proper and loving to welcome his wife to her new home, emerging from Karak’s gleaming black car. Was it so obvious in the way that Ram walked, or stood, or looked at them through his tired eyes? They did not need to ask. He felt the weight of their collective gaze and wished he could escape it. His muscles were too heavy to move. He had lost all strength. Grief devours everything. Hadn’t she died? Hadn’t she?

  * * *

  17 December 1918

  Meri pyari, my dearest,

  Did you see me, my love? I stood on the hilltop as your ship approached the port. I saw you there, wrapped in a blanket, holding our son, standing next to your brother. I waved at you then. Did you see? Our boy—he is beautiful.

  I have asked the lawyer. He says there is no hope. He says that you should have been allowed inside the country; you are married to a man who is a legal alien. But—now that you have been turned back once, they would not allow you in again. They perhaps would not even allow you to board the ship in Hong Kong.

  It is cruelty, Padma. Is there another word for it? I cannot think of another.

  Just hold on for two more years, so that I may finish the task that Uncle has asked of me. Hold on for two years and your husband will return.

  Thera,

  Ram

  22

  SEVERAL DAYS AFTER RAM’S RETURN, JIVAN TOLD HIM TO JOURNEY TO Stockton to visit the gurdwara, a day’s ride on the Southern Pacific. Kishen was sitting with them after serving breakfast, after Leela had left for school. “There is comfort there for a hurt soul,” Jivan said. “For a hurt man.” They were looking at Ram with concern. He had risen late again, when the sun was already warm in the sky.


  Ram chewed his food slowly; he had no appetite. “Bhai-ji,” he said, not wanting to disagree. Several times, for holidays in January or April, he had been to the gurdwara: a modest temple raised by fieldworkers and students on sparsely populated land. Before it existed, the laborers sometimes carried the sacred book out into the fields with them, a version of Guru Granth Sahib so small it fit in the front pocket of their dungarees. They had raised money for the building through donations from the lumberjacks and the farmers, the intellectuals and railroad workers. All those who knew and needed what the building would be.

  Now they came by rail or by wagon or by foot, they came if they were too tired or sick to work. They came from Oregon and Washington and Texas and Arizona and Michigan and Illinois. They came from New York. They came to discuss politics, to pray, to organize against employers and to organize against the British. They came if they needed a meal or a bed. They came when life was too difficult or if they needed money to repay a debt. The men ate home-cooked food in the langar, they performed chores around the grounds, their laundry was sent to the washers, they enjoyed one another’s company in the evenings.

  They came to worship too.

  “Gurdwara is like mother,” Jivan said.

  “Go, Ram,” Kishen said gently, pleading. Ram had never heard her voice an opinion about his affairs before. Something about the way she said it made him believe that the idea had first been hers. She had asked Jivan to speak with him.

  But Ram did not want to go. He did not want to be comforted; his solace would be a betrayal of Padma’s suffering. He finished his breakfast and rose to begin the day. The newly planted cotton field needed thinning. There would be a week of hard work ahead. He wanted to begin.

  Jivan did not mention the gurdwara again until two weeks later. Ram was helping him clear out silt from the delivery ditch. The family would all go now, for the annual celebration of Guru Gobind Singh’s birthday. All the Hindustanees would flock there, whether they were Sikh or Muslim or Hindu. “Everyone will come,” Jivan said.