A year after her departure, Teddy finally moved away, all the way to Cleveland, an hour and a half from where he had grown up. He hated the idea of returning, but it was cheap, and at least it wasn’t Youngstown. He found a small but clean one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a brand-new building. Because he had spent so much time belowground, he luxuriated in the place’s light as if it came from a thousand gilt candelabras. He found the job at Harriman’s soon enough.
He eventually engaged in the type of meaningless, hurtful flings that he had avoided for so long—lust won out, in the end—but any dalliance that he had always felt like a one-time miracle, a condescension on the part of a guy who might take him to bed, and their activity was always fueled by alcohol. When the world of “dating” apps arrived, Teddy felt as if he were seeing a concrete depiction of the many ways in which he had failed to enter the hallowed, privileged world of romantic success. Indeed, he had still never experienced true romance. It, too, had been interred.
“OPHELIA HELD IN HER HANDS the dead turkey, its bloody feathers matching her own headdress. Suddenly, she bit into its gizzard and drank its blood down. It was total nourishment. She would never be Hamlet’s slave again. She would never be anyone’s slave again. That is … unless she wanted to be.”
This was Stefanie’s interpretation of Thanksgiving, and these gruesome words ended her half-hour reading. Ranjana felt herself recoil. How on earth could someone take a seemingly peaceful holiday and transform it into this agonizing, overwritten bloodbath? The other writers seemed to share her reaction: Roberta attempted a brief clap; Wendy was biting her lip and pretending to look over her own pages; Colin pretended to be taking notes; and Cassie, of course, looked like she wished that Stefanie were as dead as the turkey.
“It’s, um, spirited, Stefanie,” Roberta offered, “but where does this fit into your novel? I don’t remember there being a character named Ophelia before.”
Stefanie—who had chosen to stand in the front of their circle, turning as she read in some sort of occult-themed incantation—let out an exasperated whisper. “I told you—this is a story within Esmeralda’s story. She’s having a daydream. It’s the same one from chapter three, but it’s continued here.”
Stefanie had never read chapter three to them, mainly because she had been writing this manuscript—which Ranjana had taken to thinking of as “her messterpiece”—for so many years. Looking across the circle, Ranjana saw Cassie unfold her arms and slide herself up by gripping the sides of her seat. This was a sign that Cassie was about to launch into one of her diatribes, so Ranjana piped up.
“I like the way that you’re playing with the Hamlet theme and retelling it from the woman’s point of view,” she said. It had been years since she’d read Hamlet (Wait—had she ever read Hamlet?), but she knew this: any time that you could say something complimentary about Stefanie’s work, you made her feel rationalized. The entire group, sensing the efficacy of Ranjana’s comment, nodded enthusiastically and looked at Stefanie’s seat, willing her back into it. She complied, too wistful in her self-love to see how excruciating the past half hour had been.
“Ran-ja-na, did you have something that you wanted to share today?” Roberta asked, jutting her head toward the fresh roll of pages that Ranjana had, once again, choked in her hands.
“Oh, it’s really nothing,” Ranjana said, feeling at once determined to read what she’d written and afraid at the prospect of doing so. She had written the pages out longhand, lest any electronic record of them ever be accessible to anyone else.
“My inner goddess is looking to have someone else’s inner goddess released alongside her,” Stefanie said, sparks in her eyes. She normally didn’t afford people this kind of enthusiasm, but she was still aglow from Ranjana’s fabricated praise. She motioned to Ranjana to move to the center of the circle.
This was too much to ask, but Ranjana stood.
Shakuntala met Kalpan three weeks ago—the same time that almost the entire village had. Her parents had been searching for a husband for the past year, trying every last family in the area that they could possibly find. At one point, they had even considered the idea of marrying her to a distant cousin with a missing arm, but when the man had come over for dinner with his family and ate a paratha in their presence, the sight of his one remaining arm whipping slivers of food into his mouth—like he was eating moths—had been so unsavory to Shakuntala’s mother that she had practically turned the visitors onto the street once the last bite of food was out of sight.
Then the rumors about a new man in town began. At first, Shakuntala’s family merely ignored the talk, since any new man in town who was a bachelor was surely to be wed off to one of the prettier, more desirable, richer girls. Then the rumors turned dark. The man went from “wealthy and handsome” to “reclusive and troubled.” Only a handful of people had beheld him with their own two eyes. One of them was the owner of the general store, Mr. Seth, who said that the man had approached him as he was closing the shop one night and asked if they could set up a weekly delivery of goods in the dead of night instead of during the daytime. The only reason that Mr. Seth agreed to this was because the man had compensated him handsomely. But soon enough, Mr. Seth seemed to regret his decision.
“It is such a weird arrangement,” Shakuntala overheard him telling a woman at the store one afternoon. “I make my way to him at midnight on Wednesday. He lives in that old house in the middle of the wood, you know, and he does not seem to have any mode of transportation. The day I first met him, he walked to my shop from his place. So my assistant and I have to take the cart to his house at midnight and drive up to the back of the house. He has a lady-servant greet me. She is almost as odd as he is, with skin that is just as pale and eyes with the smallest whites I have ever seen. She helps us unload the goods—oh, and here is the strangest part! He does not order food! No, it is only inedible materials—rope, chain, wood, candles, bed linens. I gave his servant a gift of mangoes once, and she flinched. I insisted that she take them, which she finally did, but Atul says he is certain he saw her toss them into the trees just as we were pulling away.”
Soon after this conversation in the general store, the animals started disappearing. At first, it was a goat here or there. They would be found with their limbs missing and their bodies startlingly tiny, the blood practically evaporated and the little hub of their bones and flesh barely anything. But then cows started to be mauled—and then to disappear. This was, of course, not only terrifying but sacrilegious. People would gasp as they saw the limp, soiled hides in the road, but a more gradual, more terrifying fear would set in when they took count of their livestock and realized that a cow or two had gone missing entirely. What sort of person could steal a cow without leaving a single trace of its kidnapping?
Several weeks after the disappearances had begun, a very bizarre invitation was nailed to the front post of Mr. Seth’s shop. Written on gold-plated paper in a script much pointier than normal Hindi, it invited everyone in town to a gathering at the old estate:
To the new neighbors,
Please come for an evening of dance and song at the home of Mr. M. H. Singh. November 4, at ten o’clock in the evening. Potluck. Please, no children.
Cordially,
Radha Mehta for Mr. M. H. Singh
The invitation was odd for a number of reasons. First, it indicated no address, although the town was so close-knit that the only house left as a possibility was, indeed, the old estate that had become newly inhabited. Second, it was a strange time for a party to begin, and it seemed redundant that children were forbidden, considering that ten o’clock would be too late to take children to a party in the first place. But the strangest issue was one of food; what self-respecting host would make his first event a potluck dinner? Why invite people out for dance and song but no prepared food? It seemed a particularly selfish—and lazy—thing to do.
And yet, everyone went. It was whispered around town that people would meet at Mr.
Seth’s store and then make their way through the woods to the estate, their various dishes cupped in earthenware pots still hot from the heat of their respective ovens. Mr. Seth stood in his doorway dressed in his best kurta, of brown raw silk and with matching shoes.
“Welcome, welcome, yaar,” he said to each person that joined the group, and he seemed at once excited, scared, and anxious. Every time he put his hands together in greeting, he made sure to show off the big ruby ring on his right index finger—clearly a fake, but nevertheless showy. He had done an amazing lot of business in the past week, as everyone had bought groceries for the potluck dinner from his store. He must have taken great pride in seeing the vegetables, spices, and meats from his shelves reconstituted in these pots, but still, it seemed to unsettle him that Mr. M. H. Singh had never used any of those products himself. Why hire a storekeeper with such a vast array of foods to deliver inedible goods these past few weeks, only to have everyone bring food from that store in one fell swoop, to be tried in one sitting?
By the time all of the guests were assembled, it was ten minutes until ten o’clock. About forty people had shown up. The hubbub was deafening. They set out in a crowd, laughing nervously and stepping lightly, with kerosene lamps held in front of them. Had they pickaxes and knives instead of lamps, they would have been a mob ready to take on a dastardly foe. Indeed, any foe would have been truly disarmed by the delicious smells emanating from their dishes. By the time they got to the estate, they were ten minutes late, and the heat of their food had dropped to a comfortable warmth.
At first, they thought they might have gotten the house wrong. All of the lights were out, and if they hadn’t brought their own, they would have been standing in complete darkness, as tall trees swayed ominously over their heads and twigs cracked underneath their feet. But then they saw the front door of the house open—a darkness opening among the darkness—and two figures emerge from it. It was hard to make them out.
“Mr. Seth,” a man’s voice said, calmly but so coldly that there was a collective stiffening of the crowd. One woman, Mrs. Jindal, dropped her rice; the clay pot landed with a tough crunch.
“Yes?” Mr. Seth said, in a voice that was as timid as his usual voice was assured.
“Mr. Seth, please come forth,” the voice said again, and it was so commanding that Mr. Seth found himself running to the front steps of the house, his lamp threatening to spill its oil onto the ground. As he approached, the light illuminated the two figures bit by bit until the lamp was snatched by the figure on the left, a woman, and threw the two people entirely into view.
The crowd gasped. The man and woman were dressed in elegant robes unlike anything anyone in the crowd had ever seen. The robes were red; the light of the lamp sank into their folds and lit the edges. The man wore his hair in two long braids, the woman in the same manner, except she wore a peculiar hat with feathers coming out of its top. They looked out at the crowd, ignoring Mr. Seth as he shrieked and covered his mouth.
“Welcome, my new neighbors,” said the man. “I am M. H. Singh, and this is my maid, Radha Mehta. We would like to invite you all inside for a beautiful evening of revelry.” At this, he clapped his hands, and—the people of the town would all remember this for the rest of their lives but would never utter a word of it to each other—Mr. Singh’s house lit up like a carnival. The front doors swung open to a brightly lit hall full of candles and flowers and furniture so elegant that it could have come from the queen’s parlors at Buckingham Palace. The top floors beamed light into the night sky; even the lights in the basement cast bright carpets on the dirt below.
Nobody moved at first, and the terrifying duo in front of them did not budge. Everyone knew that danger lurked here. There was simply too much that was unfamiliar in this situation, and this was a town where everyone could map the events of any given day before it happened, so engrained were they in their day-to-day business.
Perhaps it was this that made Shakuntala detach from the crowd and finally make her way through. She had a dish of mattar paneer in her hands; although the paneer had come out a bit tougher than she had hoped, she felt confident that the tang of the curry, mixed so gently with goat milk and cashews, would be enough to impress this strange pair. As Shakuntala took her first few steps, her father lunged forward, then caught himself with a hiccup of fear. Shakuntala knew he was struggling between keeping her safe and saving himself, and it came as no surprise to her that his own safety was the bigger consideration. After all, she was an aging, unmarried woman whom all the town’s men had dismissed. This was as good a situation as any in which she could find herself.
She walked up and presented her offering to Mr. M. H. Singh, closing her eyes, bowing her head, and holding the dish up as if it were a sword being presented to a knight. She heard Mr. M. H. Singh and his maid chuckle—their laughs could have been encased in glass—and then her chin went cold. It took her a moment to realize that her host was lifting it up with his hand. Shakuntala froze in fear. She looked into Mr. M. H. Singh’s eyes, and she could have sworn that their irises were made of silver.
“Thank you for your bravery,” Mr. M. H. Singh said, and—dare she think it?—Shakuntala thought that there was a tone of love in his voice. “Will you join me for a dance?”
Soon, she was being led to the middle of a giant room with tall curtains stretching from the bright floor to the ceiling. From somewhere came a strange, plunking sound like the extended chirping of crickets, an attempt at music. Mr. M. H. Singh moved her body across the floor, one arm raised in hers, the other around her back, the way that English people danced. She had no time to think of being scandalized—this strange man’s arm on her back, her body so close to his, the folds of her sari dangerously close to coming undone entirely. And soon enough, she looked around to see all of the villagers dancing in a similar manner. Her own parents moved with a grace that she could never have expected. Her mother looked serene, lovely, and her father, always so stern, had a smile on his face, rapture in his eyes.
Then they were all eating off copper plates, their various dishes piled high, the food hungrily shoved into their mouths as their host and his silent maid stood in the middle of the floor, watching them intently. Shakuntala felt at once invincible and ravenous for the food. Anytime that she made eye contact with Mr. M. H. Singh, she felt an odd flutter deep in her body, a feeling she thought at first to be a stomachache. But then she realized that it was coming from below her stomach, and she shivered.
There was more dancing, and even though so many of the people in attendance were old—in their fifties, sixties, even seventies—they never tired. Mr. Seth was more energetic than he had ever been. He detached himself from the group and danced by himself, a blend of kathak and an Irish jig. At one point, he climbed halfway up one of the curtains; a gaggle of women surrounded him and ordered him down, laughing all the same. Shakuntala looked at her host, thinking that he would find this amusing. After all, he had assembled them all and given rise to this madness. However, he gazed at Mr. Seth with a look of hardness, even disgust. Shakuntala, in spite of herself, found this alluring.
Shakuntala noticed that neither Mr. M. H. Singh nor Radha Mehta had partaken of the feast. Shakuntala peered over the rim of her glass at her host, her mouth half-sipping more wine, the other half grinning stupidly. She had never had wine before, had never thought she would enjoy it, but its oily sweetness appealed to her and made her feel warm and comfortable. She closed her eyes and felt in this moment that she had finally reached adulthood. Here, of all places, where the aunties and uncles with whom she’d grown up were darting about like little children. Here, where, for the first time in her almost thirty years on earth, her mother and father kissed in her presence.
“Have you ever been in love?”
It was her host. He was terrifying. Yes, his eyes really were silver, and his smile, like his laugh, seemed encased in glass. Shakuntala had never been so frightened, but she laughed. The whole situation was so peculiar.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Please pardon me, Singh Saheb, but do you not find this situation rather odd?”
His face looked the same as when Mr. Seth had climbed the curtain. “Odd? I do not find that word pleasing.”
She wanted to apologize but kept laughing. “Oh, Singh Saheb, surely you must know how odd this all is to us. This is a small town. We do not do such things.” She pointed to a corner where two women and two men were drinking bhang, increasingly intoxicated on the elixir.
“But clearly you do do such things, if you are doing them now. Just because you have not yet done them does not mean you do not do them. You have not had the chance to do them before. And yet—” And he gestured in the same manner to the same foursome of bhang drinkers.
Mr. M. H. Singh had a point—we could not know what we were capable of doing unless the opportunity to do such things was presented to us. So here she was, in an old, wooden mansion in which her family and friends became something other than themselves and where she, Shakuntala, could be something besides an unwanted daughter and sister. As much as this man scared her, she now saw in him salvation.
She continued to see salvation in him even as his true nature revealed itself, even when he kissed her behind one of those curtains, his mouth tasting of chilled water. Even when, the next day, Mr. Seth was said to be missing; and even when she attended another potluck dinner at Mr. M. H. Singh’s a week later and saw the faux-ruby of Mr. Seth’s ring gleaming from her companion’s pale pinky finger.
* * *
Ranjana looked up and saw that the room was silent, markedly different from when Stefanie had read. They looked confused, almost offended, but also gleeful. Ranjana, conditioned to look at Cassie for approval whenever anyone read, saw that she was perched on the edge of her seat, leaning far forward, squinting at the floor, as if trying to figure out an unusually difficult piece of trivia. Roberta had crossed her arms and was frowning, but this was something she did when a piece of writing moved her; it indicated that it was something beyond her own efforts or interests as a writer. Stefanie, oddly enough, appeared relaxed. She must have still been thinking of how her pages had been “well received.”
No One Can Pronounce My Name Page 25