Love Marriage

by V. V. Ganeshananthan

  There is something wrong with my Heart, he said to the cardiologist.

  Let's have a look, the American doctor said.

  Another entrance into an X-ray machine, shirt unbuttoned to expose the Betraying Heart that had for so long offered the young doctor martyrdom. The lights flashed and the Eye of the machine entered his chest. Pumping, screaming, throbbing Heart. He closed his eyes. So cold here, the Heart murmured. What are you doing here? Shut Up, the young doctor told his body.

  They pulled him out of the machine.

  The cardiologist waited with him for the film to be developed. They talked in the meantime, kin, as all doctors are.

  You're a resident?

  Yes.

  Where are you from?

  A country where it is always warm, he said, and shivered.

  Outside, it was still snowing. They looked at the film, pressed it against a viewer to read his innards, the maze of veins, the shape of his arteries. A glimpse into Eternity, an X-ray. Breathe in for me, the cardiologist said, pressing a chilly stethoscope to the skinny chest holding the Betraying Heart.

  He put the stethoscope down.

  There's nothing wrong with you, he said.

  Thank you, said the young doctor, who was not yet my father, but edging ever closer.

  VANI: HE MET HER, MY MOTHER, in New York City—which as always was full to the brim with immigrants—and the Heart said plaintively: Thump thump thump. That was not the sound of illness. Theirs was an auspicious meeting, although no one had troubled to check the alignment of the stars; the young woman was twenty-seven—old for a prospective bride?—but she did not look it. She had a generous face, he said to himself.

  He liked her glossy sheaf of dark hair, her sparse brows, her pronounced chin, her full lower lip. She smiled with her mouth closed because she did not like her teeth. He could already see within the structure of her face how she would become thinner, that her bones would give her older face a certain elegance, a chiseled and austere severity. He liked her precision in even the smallest of tasks, like arranging hibiscus in a vase. Her reserve, her inability to say anything truly personal in public. He thought she might be full of secrets and wanted to know them. She never raised her voice, but she did not speak softly. How are you? That's a beautiful sari. How are the children? I like this rice. She liked her food steaming and spicy, as he did. She made her own clothes, staying up late into the night, her foot on the pedal of a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to her mother and had crossed the ocean with her. Her hemlines were high, and it suited both the times and her young pale slimness, which reminded him of a flowering tree by his home in Jaffna. He never caught her admitting she was wrong; her words clambered around that impossibility, but so sheepishly that he found it endearing. In a roomful of noisy Sri Lankans he learned to tell the clear bell sound of her bangles apart from the rest.

  Suddenly, he was no longer thinking about widows or about repeating his own father's collapse. It was as though an invisible conductor was directing the pulling of strings to draw them together. Whether it was Murali who managed to get introduced to Vani or the other way around, no one else really remembers. And they will never admit which one of them was responsible. And yet, it was this simple: a friend of his noticed that they were staying near each other. Perhaps Murali could give Vani a ride home? Yes, yes, two heads nodded. They left the party they were at too quickly to say all their good-byes. After the door closed behind them the space where they had been was filled with the laughter of friends.

  He took her home. She boarded with a family in Brooklyn. During the car ride they were silent. It was a strange and comfortable silence for two people who had waited for so long to be alone. The thrum of the motor was loud because the car was old. When they turned around the corner he pulled over and turned the engine off and there was a quiet as loud as the motor had been. He walked her to her door and she thanked him. She did not ask him in for a cup of coffee; it was not her house. But it was out of his way and both of them knew it. She forgot that she did not like her teeth and bared them at him. Her smile, for once, was not self-conscious. She watched him drive away, waving from the window. It is something Aravindrans always do for each other when they say good-bye.

  THE SRI LANKAN ELDERS of New York City were all too eager to play parents to the couple. She was Proper: smart and polite and a good cook and lovely. Vani had a job, and more important than any of these things, she had grace, which was something that could not be taught. Murali, of course, was their Beloved Parentless Boy; their favorite bachelor-doctor whom they took into their homes and bosoms and tried to smother with welcome and curry. Friends can arrange a Marriage as easily as parents, they said among themselves, delighted. Occasions were arranged; even the very rooms seemed to conspire to make the two end up next to each other. And then one day something was suggested by one of those elders. And somehow the pair of them were talking about it. To each other. Directly.

  Which was a faux pas. But neither of them minded.

  OCEANS AWAY, FAMILIES EXPLODED. True to form, his family's discord faded quickly. But her family almost did not consent: afraid of the Improper, they questioned his intentions, his failure to observe certain formalities, his ancestry, his habits and character. He heard about what they had said and turned to her, his eyes full of questions.

  They may not know these things about you, she said, but I do.

  Are you sure? he asked her. The unsaid: they may not forgive you for this.

  Positive, she answered. Countries away, Vani's brother, Kumaran, crashed into Murali's brother's house, yelling at the top of his lungs: Who is this doctor who wants to marry my sister ? Who is this doctor who is in love with my sister ?

  The nerve of Murali, they thought. In Love? These were not words they were used to saying.

  THE WEDDING: IT WAS CHEAP. Murali, growing closer to becoming my father, built the traditional wedding altar himself; he rented a local hall; he recruited the Sri Lankan elders to help with food and organization. Without the relatives who were scattered across the world, with the friends drawn close in New York City, the Marriage was Arranged.

  There is a photograph of Vani looking very young and bashful and Proper in her Wedding-Red sari as he proposes a toast, her happiness veiled, her smile shy, so that no one could see it too clearly. I never thought I would get married here, her Heart said to his. I never thought I could find you here.

  No one heard it, as is decent. Except—

  Thump thump thump, replied the doctor's Heart, pleased at its success.

  THIS IS NOT THE STORY they tell us at first. They say they did everything according to tradition, with methods of irreproachable propriety. And her family pretends they always loved him. But look again: Vani's brother Kumaran crashes through a door, yelling at the top of his lungs. When conflict begins depends, like everything else, on the memory you acquire or are given. But regardless of what Murali told her or did not tell her, conflict for Vani began with Kumaran, the sibling to whom she was closest and the one who sent my father a letter, telling him not to marry her. The one who emerged years later, bringing Vani's daughter a war and a country from which her mother had shielded her.

  There is Proper Marriage; there is Improper Marriage.

  EVEN NOW, MY PARENTS still love each other so much that they would never admit it. But no matter which version of the story you know or how softly you whisper it, Vani and Murali were married and became, at last, my parents. I told you a story about that place, and about their leaving it, but how do I know it? I am not the end of my parents' story, but I am the reason for its telling.

  I am Yalini, their daughter. In July of 1983, I was born in the same New England that had welcomed my parents, Vani and Murali, into its arms so long ago. They had waited a long time for me. I came into the world squalling, as children should. As I was born, Murali held Vani's shoulders. I was born with jaundice. My hair was glossy like Vani's and wavy like Murali's. The nurses, gathered around my perspir
ing mother, said to each other that they had never seen a baby with quite that much hair. I came into a place anxious for my arrival. My parents, who did not know whether they should expect a daughter or a son, had already prepared a room for me. After Vani's water broke, Murali brought her into the hospital and announced that his child's room had already been painted pink. Now the nurse told him he would not have to redo it. It's a girl, the nurse said to Murali, at last my father. I was swaddled in blankets and placed in his arms. I immediately caught hold of his Heart with both tiny fists.

  I was born in the early hours of the morning, on a day in late July. And as I entered this new world, my parents' old one was being destroyed.

  BLACK JULY: MORE THAN two decades later, I think that almost every Sri Lankan Tamil knows what it means. I was born, and halfway around the world, Tamil people died, betrayed by their own country, which did nothing to save them.

  Murali was in a hospital room with me and with Vani when a younger doctor came to get him.

  Sir, there is—something. I think you will want to see it.

  Murali moved to turn the television on in the room where we were sitting, but the other doctor looked at Vani and shook his head subtly: no.

  Why don't you come with me, he said. Murali, sensing rising alarm in the other man, left us there and followed him down a long blue hospital hall, to a large waiting room, where the television was already on. My father's colleagues sat around it. They had been waiting for the new father to emerge, to offer him congratulations, to ask about baby weight and names. Now their good wishes died on their lips. No glad handshakes, no questions about the child. Instead they watched my father watching the news.

  And there on the screen, my father saw everything he had once believed in, burning. Halfway around the world, in the country he had loved first and best, people were being killed for their Tamilness. The news showed anti-Tamil riots on the streets of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, where members of the Sinhalese majority rioted against thousands of their Tamil countrymen. The news showed Tamil civilians beaten, robbed, and killed, their property seized and ruined. And the Sri Lankan government had done nothing to defend them. My father watched, and saw that he had constructed his life inside laws that were nothing more than a house of cards.

  Standing there, Murali thought of his classmates, his friends, his old village neighbors, some of whom were almost certainly in Colombo. Later, he would hear stories of organized mobs stopping vehicles on the streets, looking for Tamils. He would hear that those they had discovered were stabbed or set aflame. Later, he would come to understand that government authorities had handed enraged rioters voter lists, which showed ethnicity, so that they could go door-to-door and hunt down their Tamil neighbors, coworkers, and schoolmates. He would read about the government's failure to declare and enforce curfews. Later, people would debate emigration, asylum, property damage, and casualty numbers. Later, he would mourn, when he learned which of his friends had been among those attacked.

  And later, Tamil separatist groups would rise, newly powerful, from the ashes of those riots—their ranks strengthened by the young people whose families had been hurt in 1983 and before. Those young people would have no reason to believe in Sri Lanka, and so they would become militants. Rebels who would fight for a separate nation for Sri Lankan Tamils in the decades to come. Of these, one group would emerge the strongest: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They would blow themselves up to take others with them, targeting symbols and representatives of the state; they would attack civilians and eat cyanide to avoid imprisonment. They would kill other Tamils who did not agree with them—other rebels, politicians, and even civilians. They would fight against a government that shelled, starved, and tortured its own citizens. They would renounce their families and bring children and women into their ranks.

  They would be called terrorists. They would enter into a world in which no one was right.

  Murali did not know any of that yet. But standing there at that moment, he knew that he had left Sri Lanka totally and absolutely. He would not retire there, or grow old there, or die there. He would go back, perhaps after a long time, for a visit of a month or perhaps two. But he could never live there again. And he had never really believed that before.

  He was a father now. Murali looked around the room at the doctors who worked with him and realized how alone he was in this roomful of friends. Their faces were full of sympathy, but they did not understand who he was. They never would.

  MY PARENTS NAMED ME YALINI, after the part of their home that they loved the most. It is a Tamil name, with a Tamil home: a name that means, in part, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, the place from which they came. In Sri Lanka children do not leave their parents or resist becoming them. They fall into it easily, gracefully, take their mantles of responsibility without protest. Even those who became rebels have inherited their parents' struggles from the days after independence, and before 1983.

  But I grew up and out of my parents' house. I grew up and went to a university far away from them. At this school my work consumed me, because that was what I wanted. I mired myself in it. I called my parents infrequently, in the snatches of time between work and class, or class and meals, or lying down and sleeping. I grew up, went to school, and went away from my parents. I left their war-torn house in our peaceful country.

  There, Away, I became more like them than ever before, because no matter how American I was, I was also the only Sri Lankan. I was alone as my mother had been, stepping onto her first escalator in New York. As alone as my father had been inside the X-ray machine, before meeting my mother.

  EVERYTHING IN THIS PLACE—SO far from the home my parents had constructed for me—felt old and unremarkable. I had made myself unable to be surprised, and so I took no joy in my first independence, as my parents had taken in theirs. I had traveled a great distance, and my eyes were tired and saw nothing fresh. If you had found me there then and asked me what I missed, I could not have given you an answer.

  At the university, the other students only made me feel lonelier. I went there in the fall of 2001, and two weeks after I left my parents, terrorists attacked their adopted country, the country in which I had been born, and that I loved. Everything around us fell into disaster, in a place where we had thought that impossible. War had always mattered to me, and now, finally, far too late, it mattered to everyone else too. When I finally went to the airport to go home again on the first holiday, the faces of the security men made me think of my father and his loose tea leaves, the story he had told me of the dog barking at him so many years earlier. Their faces searched mine, or I imagined that they did. I thought of my father as a very young and innocent man and felt a strange cold gladness in being a woman, as though it made me safer, although in fact all it did was make my life more dangerous in different ways.

  When I stepped off the plane, I gripped my father's shoulders and kissed him. He seemed smaller to me. I seemed smaller to myself.

  SCHOOL DID NOT MAKE me happy, but that had nothing to do with the school itself, and everything to do with me. And of course I went back there. Perhaps I thought that as a Sri Lankan, it was my obligation to reenter my own misery without naming it. If it had not been for the obvious despair of the world around me, I would have seen my own unhappiness earlier.

  In the cold, dimweeks after what happened, the world looked at once more dangerous and more welcoming. The weather seemed cold, although it was not yet winter. The ground was still green, but it became harder and colder, as though readying itself for snow. People who would never have stopped to speak to each other before met each other's eyes squarely with what they thought was honesty. I thought that this was a lie; this was temporary. People did not care about each other like this. I felt certain that people would return to the way they had been before, as though nothing had happened. Students who lived with me gathered to talk about what had happened, but I did not join them, because that would have accomplished nothing. I wanted to be alone. I wa
nted to read. I went to the library and studied, even when our professors canceled their lectures and classes.

  In the library, I liked to read at a particular long, dark table. My father had taught me to treasure libraries. He had done this by repeating the story of his own childhood library, the Jaffna Public Library, which had been burned by thugs in 1981, two years before I was born, as members of the Sri Lankan cabinet looked on and did nothing. I looked around this American university library and noted its fire alarms and fire extinguishers. Security personnel stood at each entrance. This library was well guarded, if not well loved. In Jaffna, many irreplaceable single-copy manuscripts had burned. As a child, I had imagined it many times, in each library I had entered—men in uniforms laughing, with torches and gasoline and guns. How each shelf would fall into and break the one below it, wood blackening and metal melting. How the cover of one book would embrace the one beside it, touching it gently, so gently, with a ring of sparks.

  Nothing would burn here. In fact, during these days it was almost empty. Nobody else ever sat there, because the chairs lining the table were uncomfortable. I preferred these chairs because they made it difficult to sleep and easy to focus. Every day, after breakfast, before class, I went to that table in the library. Light came in from a long, low window above it, and the books on the shelves around it stood dusty and undisturbed. No one came there because the books were about histories that had ceased being interesting to anybody. Sometimes, if I was very tired, I laid my head down against the edge of the table to rest. After a few minutes, the sharp edge would wake me up again. If you had asked me what I was studying there, I could not have told you.