“How much will you pay?” asked the third.
“Ten rupees.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen. That’s it,” said the fisherman.
Jeffrey shrugged. There was no choice. “All right. Seventeen.”
“You couldn’t get me to do that for seventeen rupees,” sneered the second fisherman, blowing on the surface of his hot tea.
“No, but you don’t have five kids to feed,” said the third fisherman, rising. “Come on,” he waved at Jeffrey and started for the riverbank, where his old rowboat was beached. “You going to take that too?” he asked, pointing at the suitcase. “Why not leave it here with them? They’ll take good care of it.”
The other fishermen grinned at Jeffrey, who knew if he left the suitcase in their care, it would be gone when he returned.
“I’ll take it,” Jeffrey said, throwing the suitcase into the boat and climbing in after it.
The third fisherman laughed and shoved the boat free of the riverbank, then jumped in. “You’re no foreigner,” he said, taking the oars and starting to row.
“No, I’m not. I just look like one.”
“You fooled us,” the fisherman said, stroking for the river channel.
“I’m a Tamil.”
“Was your mother?”
“No.”
“Then, your father?”
“No,” Jeffrey admitted.
The fisherman frowned and pulled hard at the oars. “You might speak Tamil, but you’re a foreigner just the same. Both your mother and father were — that makes you one. There’s no way around it.”
Jeffrey did not respond, but sat stiffly on the thwart. The oars dipped with a plunking sound into the slowly moving river. The sun, edging above a distant line of palms, made a beady golden circle on the flat water. Dawn was swift this morning and brilliant.
Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Now the entire sun had heaved up over the horizon, its rays stretching across the water, streaking the huge dam with an orange swathe of color. The whole world seemed to have risen with the sun, taken part of its color, come alive when it did.
Jeffrey looked down at the urn between his feet. As if reading his thoughts, the boatman stopped rowing and held out his hand. “Pay me now. Before you do anything.”
Taking three five-rupee notes and two singles from his pocket, Jeffrey leaned forward to count them into the extended, heavily seamed hand.
“Where exactly do you want me to go?” the fisherman then asked pleasantly.
“To the middle.” Jeffrey remembered as if it were yesterday that a boatman had asked his father the same question.
Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Kerplunk.
Jeffrey squinted into the golden light at a flock of birds standing in shallow water on the far shore.
Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Kerplunk.
“How’s this?” the boatman asked.
Jeffrey did not want to stop rowing. He felt that each pull of an oar prolonged his decision to carry out the act. But judging from both banks, Jeffrey knew they were indeed in the middle of the river. This was the place where his parents would join each other again.
“Stop here,” he said.
The boatman put up his oars with a clunky wooden thud and yanked them out of the tholes. The boat drifted. The only sound then was the river lapping musically against the sides. Then the man turned his back and looked over the stern, away from Jeffrey.
For this gesture Jeffrey was grateful. It was easier to do what must be done without someone watching. He remembered vividly, as if it had happened only minutes ago, how his father had done with the same penknife what he was doing now — slitting the cloth lid of the urn. Jeffrey cut away the cloth entirely. His hands were not trembling. Had his father’s hands trembled five years ago? It was something he could not remember; perhaps it was the only thing he could not remember. Tears filled his eyes. They weren’t only for Father now, but for Mother too. His parents had come to the same place again, at last.
Jeffrey cleared his throat, reached down and gripped the copper urn with both hands and held it over the gunwale. He stared at the water flowing away from the side of the boat, little bubbles rising and vanishing. He said, “River Cauvery, take back what belongs to rivers. Take back what is yours.” He remembered his father’s words exactly and now used them for his father. Then he tilted the jar and watched the whitish ashes slide with a feathery motion from the jar’s mouth into the water. For a few moments the ashes floated, then, becoming heavy, were drawn down into the depths of the Cauvery. Jeffrey shook the jar until all the ashes had fallen into the water. What had Father done with the other jar? Befuddled a moment, Jeffrey couldn’t remember. Reaching down, he filled this jar with enough water to sink it. The shining copper, dazzling in the light, disappeared with a bubbling gurgle.
It was done. What did he feel? Relief. He had brought the ashes to this place safely. A sense of accomplishment too. He had done his duty as a son. And then a terrific rush of emptiness. He searched over the gunwale for a final trace of ash in the water, but his eyes met only a vast perpetual movement of the river. Nothing else. Here there was not even ashes, not even the urn that had carried them. Nothing here.
“Tell me when you’re finished,” said the boatman, still facing away.
“I’m done now.”
The boatman turned and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Where’s that jar? Did you throw it in too? That’s a waste, boy! I’d have used it just fine.”
But Jeffrey scarcely heard him. His attention was abruptly fixed on the opposite bank, where birds had gathered at the shore or were twittering among the overhanging limbs of trees. There was a sense of quickening in the air, as if something was going to happen. Jeffrey leaned forward, gazing steadily at the birds — white and pink and brown and red patches of color against the golden shore.
Words entered his mind: “I am here.”
And other words: “We are here!”
And then suddenly the egrets, terns, and herons flapped heavily into the golden morning, their broad wings catching the wind and moving rapidly against the background of a sky shimmering in sunlight.
“We are here.”
Shading his eyes, Jeffrey squinted at the rising birds until losing them in the sun’s rays. He sat back and looked at the man pulling the oars. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted that jar.” He remembered that Father had given the other jar to the first person who came along when they reached shore five years ago. Father had given it away for someone to use. It was only a jar; it was nothing to fear or treasure. And what had been in it was part of the water, mingling with the elements in midcurrent. “I should have given that jar to you,” he told the boatman, who nodded with a frown.
Because that’s not where Father was, where they both were.
“We are here. We are everywhere.”
He followed the soaring, pulsing rhythm of another flock of birds rising from the riverbank. Everywhere. “We are here and everywhere.”
Part II
The idea of America took hold of him thousands of feet above ground, an hour away from the airport where his aunt would be waiting. So much had happened to Jeffrey in the last few weeks that the idea of America had remained no more than that — a remote idea. Staying with Mr. Lowry in Madras, he had been caught up in the labyrinthine details of departure. And the transcontinental flight, a new and bewildering experience, had occupied his mind to the exclusion of other thoughts. Then the landing at a New York airport, where he changed planes, had given him no sense of place; it had been an impersonal arena, filled with voices, anxious faces, hurrying feet.
Now, in less than an hour, he must face a strange truth: he was an American. Although his parents had come from the States, they had rarely spoken of it. Father, especially, seemed to have put aside all recollections of his earlier life. Each mile traveled with the Swami through India had increased the distance be
tween Father and the past. Father had put his memories of America inside a balloon of the mind, cut the string, let it sail away, effortlessly. And the result? Jeffrey knew very little about his own country — or rather the country that was supposed to be his.
He stared from the plane window at a cloudless sky. It must be many degrees below zero beyond the pane of glass, yet for him such a brilliant canopy of blue meant the scorching midday heat of south India. Glancing at the wristwatch of the man beside him, Jeffrey realized with mounting excitement that within an hour he would step into a new world. Yet with the excitement he felt another and perhaps stronger emotion: the desire to turn back, go home, home to India, to the south, to his own village, to his tiny house and stuffy little room.
He had come this far not by his own choice, but because of a promise. He understood, of course, why Father had demanded it of him. After the funeral it had become painfully clear that his place was no longer in the village. Yet nothing would erase his conviction that India was his true home. Father had said, “Try America, then if you wish, return to India.” What stuck in Jeffrey’s mind was the last phrase: “Return to India.” Once his obligation had been fulfilled — to try America — he meant to go back, even if the villagers did not feel he belonged.
As minutes passed and the plane began its descent, he felt an overpowering rush of excitement that swept away his reluctance to undergo this American experience. Below, coming into view, was the earth: large flat squares of it, set off from one another by pencil-thin lines that soon became wire fences. The patches were white. They startled Jeffrey, who had expected greenery or at least the dusty brown earth of summer drought, even though he knew it was still winter here. The white meant snow. Out of it rose spindly gray trees and red farmhouses scattered across the vast frozen plain. Father in his teens had been used to this white landscape of winter. The grown man who had trudged the steamy paths of India had also trudged through snow. Father had been two men.
Over a loudspeaker the stewardess was talking. It was not easy for Jeffrey to decipher every word, because she spoke English in an accent foreign to him: American! The man beside Jeffrey tapped his arm. “Fasten your seat belt.”
They were landing.
*
The woman rushing toward him, arms outspread, was his aunt. He knew it from the craggy features of her face, from the light blue eyes so like his father’s. She hugged him hard before pulling back to get a good look at him. Jeffrey glanced self-consciously around. What would people think of such a public display? But no one seemed to notice. Perhaps in America it was all right to do such a thing. Aunt Betty, her eyes level with his, gave him a broad smile.
“You’re just like your father was at your age!”
She didn’t wait for a response, but kept talking, while leading him out of the crowd with her hand on his elbow. She was talking about the very cold weather for this time of year — it should be warmer — and how the arrival of the flight was delayed almost fifteen minutes, which had given her a moment of worry. She said other things too, rapidly, so Jeffrey could not pick everything out of the stream of words. His aunt was thin — he could see this though she wore a full-length winter coat — and looked maybe ten years older than Father. Her voice had a musical sound to it, even though she was nervous, and she smiled a lot.
Jeffrey was surprised that he liked her immediately.
It occurred to him that somewhere in the back of his mind during the latter part of the flight, he had created the image of a strict, gloomy woman, somewhat like the woman in a Dickens novel that the Mission School class had been reading. The image didn’t fit his aunt, and he felt relieved.
They reached the baggage area to wait for the flight luggage to be unloaded. When Jeffrey picked up his suitcase, Aunt Betty asked how many bags he had brought.
“Only this one.”
For an instant she frowned, as if contemplating the fact that her nephew had arrived with almost nothing. “I always say it’s better to travel light,” she remarked then with a smile. “Do you have a warmer jacket in the suitcase?”
“No, ma’am.”
Aunt Betty shook her head. “That cotton jacket isn’t near warm enough in this weather.”
In a Madras store Mr. Lowry had purchased it for Jeffrey; in 105 degree heat, it had seemed much too warm.
“Tomorrow we’ll get you a warm coat.” As they headed for the entrance of the small terminal, Aunt Betty continued talking: she had hired a car today because it wouldn’t do for him to ride a bus back to town on his arrival; so it was a little extravagance they could afford; she had sold her own car last year because a widow doesn’t go out much anyway. She went on, while Jeffrey stared through the terminal window at the airport bus she had mentioned: big, streamlined, shiny, with high tinted windows, and enormous tires. Another image flashed through his mind: an old bus coughing smoke, tilting to one side, while on the suitcase across his lap rested a copper urn.
On impulse Aunt Betty abruptly halted and gripped Jeffrey by the shoulders. “I have dreamed and dreamed of this day for years, Jeffrey. How I have hoped for you to come here! Only —” She paused and let her hands fall. “I never thought it would be under these circumstances. But don’t talk about it,” she added quickly, as if Jeffrey had been talking. “Don’t say a word till you’ve had the chance to settle in.”
“I won’t talk about my father’s death, ma’am, till you are ready,” Jeffrey said. They were the most words he had yet spoken.
His aunt raised her eyebrows and laughed nervously. “Why, boy, you have an English accent. But you would, wouldn’t you. You would! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here at last! At home. Your home. Wait till I get the car.” The words spilled out so fast that Jeffrey’s Indian ear could not quite gather them all in. He watched her rush into the parking lot. A blast of wintry air from the opened door met Jeffrey and surprised him; he had never experienced a temperature below 60 degrees. Cold air was cold! He hunched into his cotton jacket and watched the thin figure of his aunt move swiftly across the windswept lot to a car. Soon the driver pulled the car up to the airport entrance, his aunt gesturing briskly from the backseat.
Jeffrey stepped out into the midwestern cold. He was not sure that he liked it. What he hadn’t expected was a kind of burning sensation on his cheeks. It was the cold that did this all right, although for a moment it felt hot like noontime in a south Indian field.
When he was in the car, Aunt Betty sighed and patted his hand. “We travel in style today, but tomorrow it won’t be like that. Tomorrow we go back to buses!” She explained that their town was twenty miles to the west; this was the closest city with an airport. Their town was surrounded by farmland and many of its citizens were retired farmers. She talked on, while Jeffrey took quick glances at the passing countryside: the hedged white fields, the cylindrical gray silos, the red farmhouses. A cloud bank had descended suddenly from the north, and before the car had gone a few miles, snowflakes began to dance in front of the windshield. Because of them, Jeffrey was unable to concentrate on his aunt’s flow of words. Snow — he watched the white fluffs scooting and rocking in the air currents. It was a strange world to him: it was misty, the distance seeming to fold back on itself in layers, the look of the land metallic and silent. Around him was not the soft, cozy gray of a monsoon sky, but something different. He felt as though the atmosphere backed away from the car, forever receding. It did not envelop you like the atmosphere of a monsoon; it was always moving away, eluding you. These thoughts were in his mind as Aunt Betty continued to talk about — about what? Food? It seemed to be about food.
Jeffrey heard himself say, “That sounds okay.”
Aunt Betty laughed. “Okay? Do you use that word in India?”
“Yes, like that, ma’am. Even people who cannot speak English.”
“Are there many who can’t?”
“Most cannot in south India.”
“Then how do you speak to them?”
“In their language.�
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Aunt Betty smiled in acknowledgment of her ignorance. “I keep forgetting you come from somewhere else, Jeffrey. The fact is, you look so much like one of us! So much like your father.” On this last remark her voice wavered and seemed to fail her. Jeffrey looked away. He understood that all of her talk came of nervousness, grief, and confusion. He had gone through Father’s death, whereas she had yet to do so. Maybe in a way she was doing it now, with him beside her in the black car moving through the grim winter light.
*
On first seeing the rambling three-story clapboard house, he thought of Rama’s house in the village. Both were big, set back at the far end of a broad lawn. In the rapidly falling snow that slanted obliquely across the shuttered windows and porch, the slate gray house seemed immense and, unlike Rama’s house, mysterious. The snow was like a veil through which the tall gabled structure emerged from a slightly rolling ascent, dotted with bushes and a skeletal oak, its trunk gnarled and snow-coated where the wind struck it with flurries. He hunched deeply into his thin jacket, carrying his suitcase while Aunt Betty led the way up the walk, talking ceaselessly: “That bush nearly died last autumn, but a man here in town can do wonders if you get him to doctor a plant in time.”
Jeffrey glanced around in wonder at the stark mouse-colored bushes vanishing slowly under layers of white. He sensed the muted quality of the air, as if a huge invisible hand had come down and held the earth lightly in the tent of its fingers. He gazed up at the porch rising above him, as they negotiated the slippery incline to the front steps. Looking up, up, up, he saw against the watery atmosphere of the winter sky an old black weather vane, a metal rooster standing against the wind that blew steadily, soundlessly, from the north.
“We are home,” said Aunt Betty with a sigh.
Home? This white, silent winter place?
Once inside the house, Jeffrey followed her example and stomped his snowy shoes hard on the doormat.
“I left a fire going, so we could have it when we got home. I hope it hasn’t gone out altogether,” Aunt Betty was saying breathlessly. Hanging her coat on a hook, she flung open a set of double doors and went into a large parlor. Jeffrey removed his jacket too, shivering a little, and went inside, where his aunt was already bending at a fireplace, stirring the coals with an iron poker. Jeffrey scanned the large musty parlor, dimly lit by the bleak light of a snowy afternoon. The furniture was large, dark, bulky. The lamps of colored glass had tassels of white crystal hanging from their shades. The dingy wallpaper had small patterns of triangular designs. It was a far cry from the plain-green plaster walls of his village home — of nearly every village home. Over the fireplace hung two large portraits: one of a stiff-backed, white-haired, fierce-looking old man who wore a black tie and black jacket; the other of a solemn, bespectacled, white-haired old woman who wore a plain print dress with a high collar. Jeffrey stared at them. They looked uncomfortable, posed so rigidly, but on a second look they didn’t seem so forbidding — they had nice eyes. The old man possessed huge hands.
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