by Pasha Malla
‘No. I want to know.’
‘I’ve just never really talked like this to you. About Brijnath.’
‘That’s okay. Tell me.’ Please, he thought. Please fill this space. ‘What else, then?’ He pictured his mother tugging at her earlobe, something she did when trying to loosen an idea or memory. ‘Well, part of it was that Brij never loved Canada. You know this. What he needed, I think, was someone to make a home with here. And based on how he grew up, he had expectations of how a wife would fit into that.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘Because I didn’t?’
This was not what Ash wanted, to guilt-trip his mother. A new tack, then: ‘Did you miss him? After you split up.’
‘Of course I did! Still do. I mean, Rick’s a wonderful person and a far better partner—for me, I mean—in so many ways, but your dad was such a voracious reader. In thirty-eight years of teaching English I’ve had few colleagues who I can talk about books with so deeply, so passionately. You know how we met, don’t you?’
‘You were reading Shakespeare.’
‘Studying for my comps! And he came breezing up, this funny little brown guy in a corduroy suit, took one look at my book and launched right into it: “If all the year were playing holidays; to sport would be as tedious as to work.” ’
Ash laughed. ‘God, what a nerd.’
‘What about you, Ashy?’
‘What about me?’
‘Do you miss him. Your dad.’
Ash stared at his feet. Like Brij, each of his toes was garnished with a little shrub of whiskers. ‘I miss what we missed doing together. Though I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.’
‘That he’s gone, you mean.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘That he’s gone.’
—
ASH’S BUILDING SHARED FACILITIES with a neighbouring hotel, and he liked to head over for a swim just before the pool closed for the night. There was rarely anyone using it so late, and he swam lengths until his anxieties stilled and all that remained was the simple repetition of stroking from one end to the other. This was the first step of a ritual (herbal tea, The Book of Disquiet, cataloguing the day’s ignominies) to coax himself to sleep.
The pool had that sterile quality particular to everything in hotels. Its surface was as flat and taut as cling-wrap; the smell was ammonal. A spectral reflection shimmered up the walls. Mercifully, tonight Ash was alone. He left his towel, flip-flops, T-shirt and keys in a little pile and padded up to the edge. Dipped a toe: bathwater warm.
He eased in and drifted down, limbs hanging. Touched bottom. Bounced off like an astronaut on the moon. Hovered, floated. Had no thoughts. Let the moment extend. Gradually his lungs tightened. The tension spread through his chest to his neck, into his throat, up through his cheeks, until the follicles of his hair seemed to constrict and at last in a breathless surge he planted his feet and launched upward, bursting out of the water, swallowed air, then dove again and flogged his way toward the deep end.
He was a lousy, weird swimmer.
Brij, too, could never be described as naturally aquatic, plunging about with a unique hybrid of front crawl, breaststroke and doggie paddle, and surfacing intermittently with a blowholish sputter. Mona did an excellent imitation of their dad’s swimming, rendered as frantic digging in the waves for something lost. Now Ash performed the routine without irony. It felt natural. This was just how he swam.
After a couple laps he stopped and, panting and clinging to the side, detected a sudden presence at the far end of the pool. A boy, maybe ten years old, stood there with a pink lip of belly crumpling his bellybutton and folding down over his trunks.
‘Hi,’ said this boy.
‘Hi,’ said Ash. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘They sent me down for a swim. To tire me out.’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘I get hyper sometimes at night before bed.’
‘Me too,’ said Ash. ‘Come on in. The water’s warm.’
If this sounded as creepy as Ash feared it did, the boy didn’t seem to care. He rocked back and lunged into a mid-air tuck, crashing lopsided into the water. Waves sloshed the deck. He surfaced looking proud. ‘That’s my cannonball.’
‘Nice.’
‘You do one.’
‘A cannonball?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay,’ said Ash with a grin.
The scamper, the launch, the scrunch, the plunge. The fleeting abandon, the joy.
‘Whoa,’ said the boy, standing now in the shallow end. ‘Amazing!’
Ash bobbed amid his own wake. ‘Years of practice. You’ll get there.’
The boy turned solemn. ‘I live in New Zealand.’
‘Lots of chances to cannonball there, I bet.’
‘I guess. Except everyone at my school calls me Tubby Canuck.’
‘That’s mean. Is everyone mean in New Zealand?’
‘I’m from here, though. Etobicoke Ontario. We moved for my dad’s work. He teaches university. The one here was U of T Mississauga but the new one’s called…I forget. We live in Christchurch. Like Jesus Christ, like church. There’s a lot of churches there, holy.’
‘What about your mom?’ Worrying this might also seem creepy, Ash added, ‘Mine’s a professor too, like your dad.’
‘She’s a teacher, except of kids. Except she can’t teach in New Zealand because of her experience.’ The boy shook his head; he’d got it wrong. ‘Because of her lack of experience. Even though she taught in Canada, they won’t let her teach in New Zealand because she’s never taught in New Zealand. But how can you get experience if they won’t give you any? They say she has to go back to school. But she just stays home all day and reads.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘She likes it better here. I do too.’
‘Do your parents let you swim on your own all the time?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I do lots on my own in Christchurch. I’m independent. I ride the bus, go to the movies. It’s not a big deal.’
‘What if there’s no lifeguard?’
‘They said to stay in the shallow end.’
‘Gotcha.’
‘Also…they’re fighting.’
‘Ah.’
Flopping onto his face, the boy floated as if searching for something on the bottom of the pool. Ash waited for him to right himself. And when he did, asked, ‘So when are you flying home?’
‘Tomorrow, but via LA so I can check out Hollywood.’
‘Is that so.’
‘The Hollywood sign, the Walk of Fame, the Chinese Theatre, Burbank Studios. All of it. I’m going to be a director and move there when I’m older. I’ve already got my own DV camera and everything. I’ve got Final Draft, I’ve got Final Cut Pro—’
‘But why Hollywood? You can make movies anywhere.’
The boy laughed. ‘Because that’s where you have to go if you want to make it. Jeez, you don’t know very much for an adult, do you?’
‘I know they make more movies in India than in Hollywood.’ Ash wasn’t sure if this was true.
‘What kind of movies?’
‘Bollywood movies. Fun movies.’ Ash ducked his chin, took in a mouthful of water, and spat it out in a fountain. ‘Lots of singing and dancing.’
‘Ew. I hate musicals.’
‘These are different kinds of musicals. They’re kind of crazy. Do you like moustaches? There are a lot of moustaches.’
‘We lived in India too.’
‘Really? You did?’
‘Yeah, when I was five. I don’t remember it though. My dad was on sabbatical. We had a servant who had six fingers. Four fingers and two thumbs.’
‘That’s a lot of thumbs.’
‘On one hand!’ The boy looked pensive. ‘Though maybe I just saw that in a movie.’
‘That happens to me sometimes.’ Ash whip-kicked to the side of the pool and clung to the edge. ‘Where in India did you live?’
‘I don’t know, I told you. I was five. It was dirty
.’
‘Sure. It’s dirty.’ Ash sensed the conversation dwindling. ‘I’m Indian,’ he announced.
This had the required effect. The boy eyed him with renewed interest. ‘No, you’re not. You don’t look Indian. Or sound Indian.’
‘Well, I am.’
‘Nope. You’re Canadian.’
‘I’m that, too.’
‘You can’t be both. I live in New Zealand but I’m only Canadian.’ Here he seemed to ready himself for something grand—and yet Ash was not prepared for what came belting out: ‘Oh, Canada…Our home and native land…’
‘Don’t you think they should change it to our home on native land?’
‘True patriot love,’ the boy sang, his hand on his chest, standing stalwart in the pool with the water sloshing around his gut, ‘in all thy son’s command.’
What the hell, Ash thought, hauling himself up onto the deck. ‘With glowing hearts,’ he sang, disbelieving himself even as the words spilled from his mouth—where were they coming from? He’d not sung the national anthem in years. Even when the boy switched to French he remained right alongside, clueless as to what the words meant: ‘Car ton bras…sait porter l’épée…il sait porter la croix!”
And they sang, and they sang, Ash with one eye on the exit should the kid’s parents appear—should anyone appear—and find him here, belting out this ridiculous, nonsensical song, with everything he had, with all the fake, patriot love in his heart.
DEVELOPMENT
The first voice, which announced the subject, should never be silent while the second voice is giving the answer. It always accompanies with a counterpoint, which may or may not be intended for subsequent use.
1
MATT WINKED AT THE STEWARDESS in the plane’s doorway. She performed a sultry bow, hands clasped at her chin as if to swan dive into his heart, or groin. Tantric! Handing over his boarding pass, his dangling pinkie brushing hers, he cursed himself for not packing condoms in his carry-on. Though they could just go down on each other in the bathroom, if things came to it.
But first: a first impression. (Rule #1: Make yourself memorable.) As she confirmed his seat number, Matt went with a compliment: ‘Cool nose-ring.’ Then, noting her name tag (Rule #2: Always get their name), he added: ‘Meena.’
A smile, another bow, and Matt was directed to the rear of the plane.
Groundwork, complete.
But squeezing down the aisle Matt realized that Meena worked First Class. He and the rest of the low-lifes in coach were stuck with a stewardess who was in fact a man. Snippily this guy (architect glasses, suspiciously hairless arms, Raj) told Matt he couldn’t recline his seat until they were in the air.
‘Look at the size of me!’ Matt wailed. ‘How can I relax if I’m folded up like a frigging paperclip?’
Raj sighed, pressed a button on the armrest, thrust Matt upright, and proceeded to his little demo with life vests and seatbelts, staring dimly over everyone’s heads, and then the turbo kicked in and they were screaming down the runway and lifting skyward and the plane shuddered and howled while Matt, eyes closed, recalled those two bearded guys he’d watched so blithely clear airport security, baggage unchecked. Now he waited for the inevitable explosion, the plane seared in two and its flaming halves pinwheeling to earth. He was too young to die! Or if thirty-five wasn’t too young, at least he’d not yet fully lived. He’d never had sex on an airplane, for instance. And here he was about to lose the chance because of a couple nut-jobs doing jihad…
Terror aside so much could go wrong. How did air travel even work? A car he understood: spark plugs fired and gas exploded (in a good way) and something—possibly the carburetor?—turned and so did the wheels and on you went to whatever kegger or beach. But planes? How did that same process, plus a pair of unflappable wings, get a hundred tons of steel to lift like a wish into the goshdang sky? What was ‘fuselage’? Did it mean something was on fire? Fuselage off the starboard ho! he imagined Raj screaming while smoke billowed from a goose-plugged engine.
The intercom dinged and in a smug voice the pilot announced, ‘We’ve reached our cruising altitude’—our, thought Matt, as if he and the other passengers were in on it!—‘of thirty-two thousand feet.’ Why so high? Why not glide twenty yards above the ocean the whole way to Europe? That way if things went wrong the plane could just settle on the water like a spoon laid upon a table, and everyone would ride those inflatable slides down to lifeboats, aboard which there’d be a huge, grateful orgy captained by Matt in all his glory.
Matt turned to the woman beside him, a spindly brown grandma with a forehead dot so vast it looked blown there with a cannon; beyond her at the window sat some nerd reading a book. ‘Namaste,’ he said, bowing.
‘Namaste,’ she giggled. ‘You speak Hindi?’
‘Nah. Not really. I did some yoga for a bit, but I threw out my back.’ Matt slid his hand to his lumbar, winced.
‘You hurt yourself doing yoga?’
‘That’s not why I quit though. Actually the teacher asked me to leave the class—’
‘You were thrown out of yoga?’
‘I guess that’s weird?’
She giggled again. ‘First time to India?’
‘First time anywhere.’
‘Oh!’ She patted his arm.
Matt couldn’t read this gesture. Approval? Consolation? Pity? ‘In India, many people. Many, many people.’
‘So I hear. This buddy of mine—’
‘Very dirty.’ The old woman shook her head with something like remorse. ‘Indians are clean people. But India? Dirty.’
‘Were you visiting someone in Canada?’
‘My daughter, yes.’
Matt guessed this daughter to be about his age. ‘Married?’
‘Yes, to a lovely Canadian boy. Four grandchildren. I will show you some pictures.’
He was handed a phone. Obediently Matt swiped through snapshots of grinning toddlers and passed it back.
‘So why are you going to India?’ said the woman. ‘To find a wife?’
‘Why, you think I’ve got a shot?’
‘Indian girls these days, very focused on career. What is your work?’
‘I’m an actor. But currently? In school for massage therapy.’
‘Chiropractor?’
‘Not exactly.’ He reached out and lightly squeezed the old woman’s shoulder; it felt like a knuckle. And yet at his touch she loosened, even melted at bit. ‘Oh, you feel tense,’ said Matt. ‘Turn?’
She pivoted in her seat and Matt began kneading.
‘Such strong hands,’ she cooed. ‘So lovely.’
‘Your daughter’s husband never gives you a massage?’ said Matt, planting seeds.
A cleared throat whipped him around. Raj loomed behind the snack cart. ‘To drink?’
Raj rolled his eyes at Matt’s request for a rum and coke. So Matt put him to work, downing it one gulp and demanding another, and when that was done, though Raj had rolled off down the aisle, Matt rang the bell to summon another refill. By the time this drink arrived the engines had settled into a distant drone, the grandma had nodded off, snoring gently, and the plane soared out over the Atlantic.
The booze had Matt feeling considerably better about the science of aviation—about everything, really. With the bitchy steward down in the little cabin by the toilets, Matt unfolded himself from his seat, reeled up the aisle to First Class, and poked his head through the curtains.
There she was, handing out pillows.
‘Meena,’ he whispered.
‘Sir?’
‘A-meena-meena-meena.’
‘Sir, please return to your seat.’
A few First Class faces swivelled in his direction. Then swivelled away.
‘Meena-meena meeeeee-na.’
‘Sir?’
Matt bounced his eyebrows suggestively.
‘Sir,’ said Meena. ‘Please go. Now.’
‘Aw,’ said Matt. ‘You’re no fun.’
Meena put her hands on her hips.
And Matt, with a droop of his chin, said, ‘Fine.’
Still, he wasn’t beaten yet. Maybe Meena lived in Delhi? Matt could play the hapless tourist. How might he survive alone in India’s jungles and deserts, amid all those tigers and cobras and leprosied beggars wagging fleshy stumps, without a guide—was Meena interested? She was, or would be. And back at her place she’d conduct him through all the positions of the Karma or Kama Sutra on a bed draped with mosquito netting and lavish silks while Ravi Shankar twanged away in the background…
And here the fantasy inspired a hunched stagger to the toilet, Matt’s seed flushed in a mist upon the ocean below. He imagined it impregnating some lucky cod, who’d hatch a batch of fishy little Mattlings oblivious to their human dad, wondering on occasion why they had hands for fins and chest hair. Sad bastards, thought Matt, back in his seat. Then he passed out, woke up over the Balkans, ate a meal, drank two small bottles of wine and a whiskey, and passed out again watching a Bollywood movie. When he woke next they were landing, and the calendar had progressed two days from when he’d left Canada.
To Matt’s astonishment, he was the only one to applaud the successful touchdown.
Meena was at the door again, well-wishing passengers as they debarked.
‘Hey,’ tried Matt on his way past, ‘do you maybe know—’
But a shove from behind by his elderly seatmate—‘Go now,’ she barked—sent him out the door, away from Meena and onto a wobbly metal staircase. Down he was herded to the tarmac, where Matt stood gazing helplessly up the steps (Rule #14: Admit defeat and move on) swarmed by jet-lagged travellers. India smelled oddly cottagey: the earthy stink of an outhouse, the smoke of a bonfire, the marine petrolea of a dockside gas bar. The sky was purple. Everyone, it seemed, was brown.
Dark-faced people streamed from the plane, their eyes hazy and haunted by a full day of air travel, and whisked Matt aboard a waiting bus. Where was his backpack? Stolen, probably. He imagined some baggage handler home in his dung-hut slicing the thing open with a scimitar. Would it be Matt’s fault if, mistaking his penis pump for a water purifier, this guy were to spritz some malarial stew into the family teapot, and all two dozen of them perished in a heap like corpses in a zombie movie?