by Kiran Desai
Two photographs hung on the wall—one of himself and his wife on their wedding day, one of Biju dressed to leave home. They were poor-people photographs, of those unable to risk wasting a picture, for while all over the world people were now posing with an abandon never experienced by the human race before, here they were still standing X-ray stiff.
Once, Sai had taken a picture of the cook with Uncle Potty’s camera, snuck up on him as he minced an onion, and she had been surprised to see that he felt deeply betrayed. He ran to change into his best clothes, a clean shirt and trousers, then positioned himself before the National Geographies bound in leather, a backdrop he found suitable.
Sai wondered if he had loved his wife.
She had died seventeen years ago, when Biju was five, slipping from a tree while gathering leaves to feed the goat. An accident, they said, and there was nobody to blame—it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed. Biju was their only child.
“What a naughty boy,” the cook would always exclaim with joy. “But basically his nature was always good. In our village, most of the dogs bite, and some of them have teeth the size of sticks, but when Biju went by no animal would attack him. And no snake would bite him when he’d go out to cut grass for the cow. He has that personality,” the cook said, brimming with pride. “He isn’t scared of anything at all. Even when he was very small he would pick up mice by the tail, lift frogs by the neck….” Biju in this picture did not look fearless but appeared frozen, like his parents. He stood between props of a tape player and a Campa Cola bottle, against a painted backdrop of a lake, and on the sides, beyond the painted screen, were brown fields and slivers of the neighbors, an arm and a toe, hair and a grin, a chicken tail frill, though the photographer had tried to shoo the extras out of the frame.
The police spilled all the letters from the case and began to read one of them that dated to three years ago. Biju had just arrived in New York. “Respected Pitaji, no need to worry. Everything is fine. The manager has offered me a full-time waiter position. Uniform and food will be given by them. Angrezi khana only, no Indian food, and the owner is not from India. He is from America itself.”
“He works for the Americans,” the cook had reported the contents of the letter to everyone in the market.
Three
All the way in America, Biju had spent his early days standing at a counter along with a row of men.
“Would you like a big one?” asked Biju’s fellow server, Romy, lifting a sausage with his tongs, waving it full and fleshy, boing-boinging it against the side of the metal pan, whacking it up and down, elastic, before a sweet-faced girl, brought up to treat dark people like anyone else.
Gray’s Papaya. Hot dogs, hot dogs, two and a soda for $1.95.
The spirit of these men he worked with amazed Biju, terrified him, overjoyed him, then terrified him again.
“Onions, mustard, pickles, ketchup?”
Dull thump thump.
“Chili dog?”
Thump Thump Wiggle Waggle. Like a pervert jumping from behind a tree—waggling the appropriate area of his anatomy—
“Big one? Small one?”
“Big one,” said the sweet-faced girl.
“Orange drink? Pineapple drink?”
The shop had a festive air with paper chains, plastic oranges and bananas, but it was well over one hundred degrees in there and sweat dripped off their noses and splashed on their toes.
“You like Indian hot dog? You like American hot dog? You like special one hot dog?”
“Sir,” said a lady from Bangladesh visiting her son in a New York university, “you run a very fine establishment. It is the best frankfurter I have ever tasted, but you should change the name. It is very strange—makes no sense at all!”
Biju waved his hot dog with the others, but he demurred when, after work, they visited the Dominican women in Washington Heights—only thirty-five dollars!
He covered his timidity with manufactured disgust: “How can you? Those, those women are dirty,” he said primly. “Stinking bitches,” sounding awkward. “Fucking bitches, fucking cheap women you’ll get some disease… smell bad… huhshi… all black and ugly… they make me sick….”
“By now,” said Romy, “I could do it with a DOG!—Aaaargh!—” he howled, theatrically holding back his head. “ArrrrghaAAAA…”
The other men laughed.
They were men; he was a baby. He was nineteen, he looked and felt several years younger.
“Too hot,” he said at the next occasion.
Then: “Too tired.”
The season progressed: “Too cold.”
Out of his depth, he was almost relieved when the manager of their branch received a memo instructing him to do a green card check on his employees.
“Nothing I can do,” the manager said, pink from having to dole out humiliation to these men. A kind man. His name was Frank—funny for someone who managed frankfurters all day. “Just disappear quietly is my advice….”
So they disappeared.
Four
Angrezi khana. The cook had thought of ham roll ejected from a can and fried in thick ruddy slices, of tuna fish soufflé, khari biscuit pie, and was sure that since his son was cooking English food, he had a higher position than if he were cooking Indian.
The police seemed intrigued by the first letter they had read and embarked on the others. To find what? Any sign of hanky panky? Money from the sale of guns? Or were they wondering about how to get to America themselves?
But although Biju’s letters traced a string of jobs, they said more or less the same thing each time except for the name of the establishment he was working for. His repetition provided a coziness, and the cook’s repetition of his son’s repetition double-knit the coziness. “Excellent job,” he told his acquaintances, “better even than the last.” He imagined sofa TV bank account. Eventually Biju would make enough and the cook would retire. He would receive a daughter-in-law to serve him food, crick-crack his toes, grandchildren to swat like flies.
Time might have died in the house that sat on the mountain ledge, its lines grown indistinct with moss, its roof loaded with ferns, but with each letter, the cook trundled toward the future.
He wrote back carefully so his son would not think badly of his less educated father: “Just make sure you are saving money. Don’t lend to anyone and be careful who you talk to. There are many people out there who will say one thing and do another. Liars and cheats. Remember also to take rest. Make sure you eat enough. Health is Wealth. Before you make any decisions talk them over with Nandu.”
Nandu was another man from their village in the same city.
______
Once a coupon had arrived in the Cho Oyu post for a free National Geographic Inflatable Globe. Sai had filled it out and mailed it all the way to a PO box in Omaha, and when so much time had passed that they had forgotten about it, it arrived along with a certificate congratulating them for being adventure-loving members pushing the frontiers of human knowledge and daring for almost a full century. Sai and the cook had inflated the globe, attached it to the axis with the provided screws. Rarely was there something unexpected in the mail and never anything beautiful. They looked at the deserts, the mountains, the fresh spring colors of green and yellow, the snow at the poles; somewhere on this glorious orb was Biju. They searched out New York, and Sai attempted to explain to the cook why it was night there when it was day here, just as Sister Alice had demonstrated in St. Augustine’s with an orange and a flashlight. The cook found it strange that India went first with the day, a funny back-to-front fact that didn’t seem mirrored by any other circumstance involving the two nations.
______
Letters lay on the floor along with a few items of clothing; the worn mattress had been overturned, and the newspaper layers placed underneath to prevent the coils of the bed from piercing the meager mattress had been messily dispersed.
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br /> The police had exposed the cook’s poverty, the fact that he was not looked after, that his dignity had no basis; they ruined the facade and threw it in his face.
Then policemen and their umbrellas—most black, one pink with flowers—retreated through the tangle of nightshade.
On his knees, the cook searched for the silver knob of the watch, but it had vanished.
“Well, they have to search everything,” he said. “Naturally. How are they to know that I am innocent? Most of the time it is the servant that steals.”
______
Sai felt embarrassed. She was rarely in the cook’s hut, and when she did come searching for him and enter, he was ill at ease and so was she, something about their closeness being exposed in the end as fake, their friendship composed of shallow things conducted in a broken language, for she was an English-speaker and he was a Hindi-speaker. The brokenness made it easier never to go deep, never to enter into anything that required an intricate vocabulary, yet she always felt tender on seeing his crotchety face, on hearing him haggle in the market, felt pride that she lived with such a difficult man who nonetheless spoke to her with affection, calling her Babyji or Saibaby.
She had first met the cook when she had been delivered from St. Augustine’s in Dehra Dun. Nine years ago now. The taxi had dropped her off and the moon had shone fluorescently enough to read the name of the house—Cho Oyu—as she had waited, a little stick figure at the gate, her smallness emphasizing the vastness of the landscape. A tin trunk was at her side. “Miss S. Mistry, St. Augustine’s Convent.” But the gate was locked. The driver rattled and shouted.
“Oi, koi hai? Khansama? Uth. Koi hai? Uth. Khansama?”
Kanchenjunga glowed macabre, trees stretched away on either side, trunks pale, leaves black, and beyond, between the pillars of the trees, a path led to the house.
It seemed a long while before they heard a whistle blowing and saw a lantern approaching, and there had come the cook, bandy-legged up the path, looking as leather-visaged, as weathered and soiled, as he did now, and as he would ten years later. A poverty stricken man growing into an ancient at fast-forward. Compressed childhood, lingering old age. A generation between him and the judge, but you wouldn’t know it to look at them. There was age in his temperament, his kettle, his clothes, his kitchen, his voice, his face, in the undisturbed dirt, the undisturbed settled smell of a lifetime of cooking, smoke, and kerosene.
______
“How dare they behave this way to you,” said Sai, trying to overcome the gap between them as they stood together surveying the mess the police had left in his hut.
“But what kind of investigation would it be, then?” the cook reasoned.
In their attempt to console his dignity in two different ways, they had merely highlighted its ruin.
They bent to collect his belongings, the cook careful to place the pages of the letters in the correct envelopes. One day he’d return them to Biju so his son would have a record of his journey and feel a sense of pride and achievement.
Five
Biju at the Baby Bistro.
Above, the restaurant was French, but below in the kitchen it was Mexican and Indian. And, when a Paki was hired, it was Mexican, Indian, Pakistani.
______
Biju at Le Colonial for the authentic colonial experience.
On top, rich colonial, and down below, poor native. Colombian, Tunisian, Ecuadorian, Gambian.
______
On to the Stars and Stripes Diner. All American flag on top, all Guatemalan flag below.
Plus one Indian flag when Biju arrived.
______
“Where is Guatemala?” he had to ask.
“Where is Guam?”
“Where is Madagascar?”
“Where is Guyana?”
“Don’t you know?” the Guyanese man said. “Indians everywhere in Guyana, man.”
“Indians in Guam. Everywhere you look, practically, Indians.”
“Trinidad?”
“Trinidad full of Indians!! Saying—can you believe it?—‘Open a caan of saalmon, maaan.’”
Madagascar—Indians Indians.
Chile—in the Zona Rosa duty-free of Tierra del Fuego, Indians, whiskey, electronics. Bitterness at the thought of Pakistanis up in the Areca used-car business. “Ah… forget it… let those bhenchoots make their quarter percent….”
Kenya. South Africa. Saudi Arabia. Fiji. New Zealand. Surinam.
In Canada, a group of Sikhs came long ago; they went to remote areas and the women took off their salwars and wore their kurtas like dresses.
Indians, yes, in Alaska; a desi owned the last general store in the last town before the North Pole, canned foods mostly, fishing tackle, bags of salt, and shovels; his wife stayed back in Karnal with the children, where they could, on account of the husband’s sacrifice, afford Little Angels Kindergarten.
On the Black Sea, yes, Indians, running a spice business.
Hong Kong. Singapore.
How had he learned nothing growing up? England he knew, and America, Dubai, Kuwait, but not much else.
______
There was a whole world in the basement kitchens of New York, but Biju was ill-equipped for it and almost relieved when the Pakistani arrived. At least he knew what to do. He wrote and told his father.
The cook was alarmed. What kind of place was he working in? He knew it was a country where people from everywhere journeyed to work, but oh, surely not Pakistanis! Surely they would not be hired. Surely Indians were better liked—
“Beware,” the cook wrote to his son. “Beware. Beware. Keep away. Distrust.”
His son had already done him proud. He found he could not talk straight to the man; every molecule of him felt fake, every hair on him went on alert.
Desis against Pakis.
Ah, old war, best war—
Where else did the words flow with an ease that came from centuries of practice? How else would the spirit of your father, your grandfather, rise from the dead?
Here in America, where every nationality confirmed its stereotype—
Biju felt he was entering a warm amniotic bath.
But then it grew cold. This war was not, after all, satisfying; it could never go deep enough, the crick was never cracked, the itch was never scratched; the irritation built on itself, and the combatants itched all the more.
“Pigs pigs, sons of pigs, sooar ka baccha” Biju shouted.
“Uloo ka patha, son of an owl, low-down son-of-a-bitch Indian.”
They drew the lines at crucial junctures. They threw cannonball cabbages at each other.
______
“***!!!!”said the Frenchman.
It sounded to their ears like an angry dandelion puff, but what he said was that they were a troublesome pair. The sound of their fight had traveled up the flight of steps and struck a clunky note, and they might upset the balance, perfectly first-world on top, perfectly third-world twenty-two steps below. Mix it up in a heap and then who would patronize his restaurant, hm? With its coquilles Saint-Jacques à la vapeur for $27.50 and the blanquette de veau for $23, and a duck that made an overture to the colonies, sitting like a pasha on a cushion of its own fat, exuding the scent of saffron.
What were they thinking? Do restaurants in Paris have cellars full of Mexicans, desis, and Pakis?
No, they do not. What are you thinking?
They have cellars full of Algerians, Senegalese, Moroccans….
Good-bye, Baby Bistro. “Use the time off to take a bath,” said the owner. He had been kind enough to hire Biju although he found him smelly.
Paki one way, Biju the other way. Rounding the corner, meeting each other again, turning away again.
Six
So, as Sai waited at the gate, the cook had come bandy-legged up the path with a lantern in his hand, blowing on a whistle to warn away jackals, the two cobras, and the local thief, Gobbo, who robbed all the residents of Kalimpong in rotation and had a brother in the police to
protect him.
“Have you come from England?” the cook asked Sai, unlocking the gate with its fat lock and chain, although anyone could easily climb over the bank or come up the ravine.
She shook her head.
“America? No problem there with water or electricity,” he said. Awe swelled his words, made them tick smug and fat as first-world money.
“No,” she said.
“No? No? His disappointment was severe. “From Foreign.” No question mark. Reiterating basic unquestionable fact. Nodding his head as if she’d said it, not he.
“No. From Dehra Dun.”
“Dehra Dun!” Devastated, “Kamaal hai,” said the cook. “Here we have made so much fuss, thought you’re coming from far away, and you’ve been in Dehra Dun all along. Why didn’t you come before?
“Well,” said the cook when she did not answer, “Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” she said.
“Dead.” He dropped the lantern and the flame went out. “Baap re! I’m never told anything. What will happen to you, poor child?” he said with pity and hopelessness. “Where did they die?” With the lantern flame out, the scene became suffused with mysterious moonlight.
“Russia.”
“Russia! But there aren’t any jobs there.” Words again became deflated currency, third-world, bad-luck money. “What were they doing?”
“My father was a space pilot.”
“Space pilot, never heard of such a thing….” He looked at her suspiciously. There was something wrong with this girl, he could tell, but here she was. “Just have to stay now,” he mulled. “Nothing else for you… so sad… too bad….” Children often made up stories or were told them so as to mask a terrible truth.
The cook and the driver struggled with the trunk as the driveway was too overgrown with weeds to accommodate a car; just a slim path had been stamped through.