Vine of Desire

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  “I can’t go on this way anymore,” Sunil says. “It’s killing me.” He speaks softly, precisely, his eyes on the flowers. A passerby might think he was telling me the histories of roses. “I should have spoken to you earlier, but I was afraid you’d leave. All these months I thought, At least she’s here in the same apartment, breathing the same air. The glass she drinks from, I drink from it, too, sometimes. Other times I insisted to myself, I’ll get over her if I keep seeing her day after day. See her in the morning, face puffy with sleep, hair pulled back. See her at night, her sari stained with cooking, her eyes lined and tired.” He shakes his head. “None of it was any good. And then you went out with Lalit, and I was afraid I’d lose you again.”

  Can one lose again what one never had? But I don’t say anything. Nor do I try to stop him. It’s too late for that. The moment I wrote to Anju agreeing to come to America, it started being too late. Now he must say it all.

  “What’s worse? To tell the truth and hurt the people close to you, or to keep it bottled inside and hurt yourself?”

  Sunil, it isn’t as simple as you make it out to be. Sometimes you tell the truth, and everyone’s hurt. Sometimes the truth forces you into places you never intended to go when you spoke it.

  “Well, here’s my truth—I don’t love Anju. I’ve failed to make myself love her. I admire her for many things. I feel responsible for her, even more so since the miscarriage. But what I felt toward you—from the day I came to the bride-viewing for Anju in the Chatterjee house—I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if that’s what people call love. But it’s the closest thing to it that I’ve known. If I compare it to what I feel for Anju, it’s like holding a firefly in one hand and a live coal in the other. Don’t think I’ve enjoyed it, not for a moment. Before the wedding, I thought of you night and day. So many times I was set to tell Anju, let’s call it off. But I’d see how her face lit up on seeing me, I knew the humiliation she’d undergo if the match was broken….”

  He twists the strap of the diaper bag so hard it breaks off in his hand. He stares at it without seeing, then lets the bag fall to the ground.

  “I just couldn’t do it. I thought I was being kind, but maybe it was only cowardice. Was it cowardice, Sudha, is that why I’m paying for it now?”

  There’s so much sorrow in his face, I could drown in it. My heart twists like the strap of the diaper bag. Perhaps it, too, will snap.

  “I said to myself, love will come after marriage—that’s what happened with many of my friends. When we’re in America, everything will work out. I pushed you from my thoughts—and kept you out most of the time. But Anju and I grew apart anyway. Even before the … miscarriage. I think she sensed the coldness in me. She never spoke of it—she had too much pride—but somewhere inside, she removed herself. If our boy had been born, we would have made it somehow. Patched up our marriage because of him, like so many couples do. But his death—it towered between us like a wall of ice. We were freezing to death. And then you came.”

  He stops for breath. I don’t think he’s ever spoken like this. In an old tale Pishi told us, there was a man who tied an iron cord around his chest at all times to save himself from feeling too much. I’m hearing metal strain and snap. What I don’t know is whether I’m doing him good or harm.

  “I was obsessed all over again. I told myself it was wrong, but when I walked into a room where you were, the hairs on my arm stood up. I couldn’t talk to you without breaking into a sweat. I wanted to kill Ramesh. At the same time, I was overjoyed that he hadn’t had the sense to cherish you like I would have. Like I already did, even though I had no right to. But loving you was like breathing. How could I stop myself? All this time with Anju, I’d been only half-alive. I see that now, and I can’t bear to go back into that bleakness again.”

  The air around me could be frozen crystal, it is so hard to draw into my lungs. Whoever could have imagined that I, Sudha, the luckless one, would be loved one day with such absoluteness? I feel Sunil’s need pulse through my arteries, the most dangerous of drugs. How easy it would be to grow addicted to it.

  “I’ve been waiting for Anju to get better. And now that she’s back in college and doing so well, I’m going to sit down and talk to her. About how we’re no good for each other. All we do is bring out the worst in each other. She sees it herself, I’m sure. I’m going to ask for a divorce.” He swallows hard and takes my hand. “Sudha, will you marry me?”

  In their simplicity, the words pierce me. I did not expect them to come at me so sudden and unadorned. Oh, Anju. A terrible hope smolders in his eyes. It fills me with pity. Pity for all three of us, and for Dayita, who must suffer the aftershock, no matter what I decide today.

  “I’m rushing you, aren’t I?” he says. “I don’t want to do that. We’ll wait as long as you like.” And then, watching my face, “You’re feeling guilty. Please don’t. Because whatever you choose to do, I’m going through with the divorce. The breakdown of our marriage began long before you came to America. It has no connection with what I feel for you.”

  Oh, Sunil, there’s no end to what we can make ourselves believe, is there?

  “Everything is connected,” I say sadly.

  “I can’t live with Anju anymore, even if it means that I’ll have to live alone. But I hope it won’t come to that. Please, Sudha, give me some hope.” He is kissing my hand now, his face pressed into my palm. I can feel the small, warm suck of his in-breath against my lifeline. Why does it feel as though his palm is against my face, pressing? The hunger in him is a black hole into which I could so easily disappear. When you want a thing so much, does that give you a right to it? Something slashes through my body like a sword. Is it desire? It cuts me to pieces. Now there are many Sudhas, each wanting something different. To be independent. To be desired. To be true.

  But what is truth, and to whom shall I be true?

  “At least don’t say no,” he says. “At least think about it.”

  I want to laugh. Even if I wanted to, how could I stop thinking about this afternoon, this hinge from which my future hangs like a door not yet opened?

  Dayita comes crying. She’s pricked her finger on a bush of sweetheart roses. I suck away the drop of blood, try to hush her. But she won’t stop whimpering until Sunil picks her up and kisses her. Hey, kid, hey, pumpkin, look in my shirt pocket. She searches, tears forgotten, then holds up a lollipop in triumph.

  Another man would have used Dayita in his argument. It’ll be so good for her—I love her as a father already. I respect him for not doing that to me.

  We walk back along aisles of yellow roses. Sunsprite, Mermaid, Golden Wings. Names free of the weight of earth, of the body’s insistences. My sari palloo catches on a bush, and Sunil kneels to free it. I once read that yellow roses symbolized friendship. In his loyalty and kindness, his attempts to hold on to honor, Sunil would have made a good friend. I say a quick, silent prayer: this lifetime is lost to us, but in a future incarnation, may we be blessed by such a bond. If such a thing is possible between men and women. To guide, warn, and console each other. To love each other in that other, better way.

  In the car, we are too preoccupied to make small talk—and everything else seems to have been said already. He turns on the radio. We listen to callers giving the talk-show host their opinions as to whether O. J. is guilty or not. He bends forward as though to get closer to the radio, his nose quivers like a fine hunting dog’s, picking up a scent. For all that he’s told me, how little I know him.

  And so I ask, “Why are you so fascinated by the Simpson case?”

  He hesitates. I think he will retreat behind his usual prickliness. Then he says, “I used to play a bit of football in India—what they call soccer here. Nothing fancy, mostly just with the neighborhood boys, in a muddy field near the bus depot. But I loved it. It gave me a chance to get away from the house. My happiest memories are of being on that field, running with the ball.” He looks into the distance. The years have taught him to hi
de his feelings, but I think I catch a glimpse of the boy he’d been, a flash of skinny brown legs across a stubbled expanse, losing himself in an exuberance of speed.

  “Anyway, when I knew I was coming to America, I went to the USIS library and looked up a book on American football. That’s when I came across Simpson’s story, how he broke out of the ghetto and made it through college to become one of the greatest players of his time. It made an impression on me—maybe because he was brown-skinned, too. Maybe because he’d overcome so many odds, so many people telling him he was no good. I identified with that. I got a poster of him after I got to the university and put it up in my room, and when things were hard—a class not going well, a fellowship running out, an adviser giving me a hard time, I’d think it must have been even harder for him. Once I saw him on TV, talking about some kind of charity he was involved in, raising money for black kids. Maybe it was just for the publicity, but he seemed to really care. There was a poise about him that I wanted to own. And now—I guess I’m obsessed with wanting to know if I misread him, like I’ve done with so many people. If it was all just an act. But if it wasn’t—and if he really did kill his wife—I want to know what it is that forces a good man into violence like that.”

  Sunil. Anju’s husband. A man of many obsessions, a man who’s decided to live for himself. Can he be called a good man? And I, if I follow this voice inside which says, Take him, you’ll never find a man who loves you more intensely, will there be any goodness left in me?

  We’ve reached the apartment parking lot. Sunil starts to get out.

  “Please go back to work,” I say. “I’ve got to be alone, to think through things.”

  He starts to protest, then says, “I understand.”

  Isn’t this the greatest illusion we live by—that we understand each other?

  On an impulse I ask, “What’s the difference between a soldier and a lady?” Even to myself I sound foolish.

  But he says, “Wait! I think I remember hearing it at school in Calcutta—what was it?—ah, yes, a soldier faces the powder and a lady powders the face. That old riddle! Who told it to you?”

  The ways in which people surprise us! I am glad that we are leaving each other in laughter.

  I call to Dayita, but she’s fast asleep in the car seat.

  “Let me carry her upstairs for you,” he says.

  I can’t say no. What if this is the last time he’ll hold her in his arms, that pink, baby-lotion smell, the compact, determined nose wedged into his neck? I follow him up the stairs, the broken straps of the diaper bag dangling from my hand.

  The child is sleeping, curled like a roly-bug, in her crib. The sun pulls a rain cloud over itself like a comforter. The room turns dark, so when the man speaks, the woman cannot see what he is saying. I can’t see, she says. He says, Here, I’ll light my hands for you, and he does. His hands are burning, they’re a thousand watts each. She says, Don’t touch me. He says, Only with my eyes. There is an ocean in the living room. His eyes pull her down into the foam. The waves are rocking all the words out of her. Her nipples are bare and hard under his breathing. Her body pitches like a boat in a storm.

  He thinks, This is what I waited for all these years.

  She thinks, This?

  The child is sleeping, her face closed up like a bud in frost. The sun has fallen into the ocean and cannot climb out. The man’s nipples are salty as sunflower seeds. The room turns into smoke, making the woman’s eyes water.

  Why are you crying? he asks. My sweetness, my life.

  The words turn into birds and fly at her. She reaches out a hand. Wings, claws, shit. Yes, that’s what I deserve. What nonsense are you speaking, he says. His leg between her legs, her tongue between his teeth, his hair covering her eyes, her conscience buried under his hips.

  The child makes a sound like a phone ringing. The man breathes like someone who’s fallen into an ocean. The woman doesn’t breathe at all.

  What have we done?

  We haven’t done anything wrong.

  The ocean breaks against a phrase: My sister’s husband. The birds beat out syllables with their wings: Love, love, love. The windows close their eyes so tight, there are star bursts inside. In his grasp, her wrists are as fragile as incense sticks. Wind’s in the north, storm’s coming up. He is asking, Shall I stay with you? The lamp shakes its shadow. No, no. He is saying, Tonight I’ll talk to her, it’ll all be settled. The words pour themselves into her ears like boiling wax. His hands are flowers embroidered in silk.

  Kiss me, my heart, my queen.

  Go now.

  The walls are painted in the colors of ecstasy. The sofa is upholstered in regret. If you ever look at anyone else, he says as he pulls on his pants. Now you know what makes a good man crazy, the sun says from the bottom of the ocean. She’s spread on the floor like a spent wave. Foam fills her eyes, her bones are coral-made. The child sleeps like a pearl in an oyster shell about to be pried open.

  How long after he leaves, when I grope around for my underwear? My hands shake, buttoning my bra. My fingers snag on the folds of my skin. My sari is a mess of wrinkles that refuse to be smoothed out. The clock on the oven points to just after noon. Can that be right? In the space of three hours, a life, four lives—what’s the verb I’m looking for—tangled, unraveled, turned upside down? There’s no word that fits this disjointed feeling, this sense of everything out of place.

  Everywhere I look, something of Anju’s. A book left open, facedown, on the coffee table, an unwashed teacup on the kitchen counter, a kicked-off pair of sandals just outside the coat closet: silent alphabets of reproach.

  I have nothing to say in my defense. If I had said no, if I had struggled, he would have stopped. I considered it, when his fingers were on the hooks of my blouse, fumbling, as though he hadn’t undressed a woman in a long time. But a peculiar heaviness held down my limbs. Words swirled around in my head, their colors bleeding into each other. Morality, immorality. He desired it so much, it seemed unfair to withhold it from him. It was only a body, after all: blood and cartilage, hair and muscle and waste matter. If it gave him such pleasure, such belief in love’s power, why not? I’d given it to Ramesh for far less.

  Is that why you shivered in delight when his lips went traveling over your skin? I hear Anju say. Is that why you cried out, bucking, raking your nails across his back, raising weals that a wife may later find?

  I may not know why I did what I did, but what I must do now is clear enough.

  I find Lupe’s number in the bottom of my purse and dial it. Please, please. The phone rings a long time. My heart races from hope to disappointment and back again. Of course she wouldn’t be there, in the middle of the day. Clot of despair in my throat. When the answering machine tells me to leave a message at the beep, I can barely get the words out.

  “This is Sudha. That job you told me about, the old man, is it still available? Please call me back, I’m interested. Please—as soon as you can. My number is—”

  There’s a mechanical clicking on the line. Then her voice: “This is Lupe.”

  “The job you told me about—”

  “Yeah, I heard you. I don’t pick up the phone every time it rings—a lot of people call me that I don’t necessarily want to talk to. The job’s still there. You want it?”

  My tongue is thick with thankfulness. “Yes, yes.”

  “Hey, you okay? You sound kind of funny.”

  Even that slight concern in her voice threatens to bring on the tears I’ve been holding back. “I’m all right,” I manage to say. “But I’ve got to leave here right away. Can someone come pick me up in the next couple of hours?”

  I wait for her to say that isn’t possible, but she only says, “I can come by in an hour and a half and drive you up to Berkeley.” She doesn’t ask for explanations, doesn’t sound surprised. Perhaps she’s used to women who need to make fast getaways. She jots down the sketchy directions I give her—I know so little beyond the few streets I walk on, it
’s shameful—and tells me to wait on the street for her.

  I pack as quickly as I can: a bag for myself, and one for Dayita. I leave a lot of things behind. It’s becoming a pattern in my life, shedding belongings as I flee—first from Ramesh’s house, then the mothers’ flat in Calcutta, now from Anju’s. It should make me feel lighter. But the emotions lodged in my chest like rusted anchors weigh me down.

  Baby blankets, diapers, a bottle of Gripe Water. I feel a pang as I put in Dayita’s favorite stuffed animal, a bear which Sunil bought her the week after she arrived here. He named it Jambavan, after the bear in the Ramayana. They call him Jamu. What I’m doing, what I’m depriving her of—when she’s old enough to understand, will she hate me for it?

  Dayita, none of the choices ahead of me are good ones. This one just seems a little less bad than the others.

  Now the most difficult part: the two letters. I tear up sheet after sheet, consider leaving without writing them. But that would be cowardly.

  Excuse me, Dayita says in my head, sounding just like Anju. You think the rest of what you’re doing is brave?

  Dear Anju,

  I’m sorry to leave like this. I don’t know what else to do. I came here to help you put your life together—but all I’ve done is disrupt it. I’m leaving before I make things worse. With me gone, hopefully the tension between you and Sunil will die down.

  Don’t worry about me. I have a job. I’ll tell you more when I can. In any case, I wanted to work and make a little money before returning to India. To experience life in this country, and not just from the shelter of your home. This will allow me to have that.

  Thank you for everything you did for me. You gave me a chance to get away from the problems that were suffocating me in India. I think that’s given me a better perspective on my life—at least I know what I don’t want.

  We haven’t been too good about talking to each other recently, but I love you, Anju. I’m still your sister. That’ll never change.