by Preethi Nair
Krishna and the driver were busy signing autographs for the school children who had hijacked the car. It was very late and their mothers came out of the houses, dragging them back home. Some asked if we wanted to stay and have dinner and then a fight broke out as to whose house we would eat in. We thanked them all and said it would be better to leave. Before we knew it, various savouries tied in cotton were thrust through the car windows and the villagers waved us off. None of my father’s family came to say goodbye but then I didn’t really expect them to.
‘Did you find her?’ Krishna asked.
‘Yes, I found her.’
The journey was silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts, playing against the orchestra of crickets and frogs. We arrived back at the hotel and went to sleep.
The next day, Vijay left us at the airport. He cried as we left. I don’t know if this was because of the size of the tip we gave him or because he would miss us but he said that he would say a prayer for me every week so that God would send me a good husband with a large plot of land, even a plantation. Krishna and I took a flight back to Mumbai the next day. It would have been possible to go back to Spain that very day, but I wanted to stay, not in the Taj, but in a home. I asked Krishna if he could arrange it. He said he lived outside of Mumbai with his parents and if I wanted to stay, I would be more than welcome, but it was basic. So I packed up my things and he came to collect me.
Krishna worked for Ravi Thakker in one of his offices in Mumbai. He had been there ten years, since leaving college. He wasn’t married and said that you didn’t have to look for these things, if they were meant to happen they would, when the time was right. His mother thought differently and left pictures of various girls in the dining area with a short résumé of their lives, hoping that one might catch his eye.
The house was sparse but they had everything they needed and it was, most importantly, filled with warmth. Krishna had bought it for them a few years ago and they were very proud of him. The latest purchase he had made for his family was a colour television, which they kept safely locked up in a metal cabinet and only brought out for special events. His parents were very welcoming, his mother probably thought I had ulterior motives for staying and tried hard to communicate with me. Not understanding a word of what she was saying, I smiled and probably unwittingly said yes to a host of wedding plans.
I spent days on end sitting in the kitchen area with his mother and their servant girl. I watched spices being ground with stone, leaves being soaked and dried in the sun, fruit being preserved into pickles, dishes prepared from scratch with love and attention. Each person was working through their own thoughts and kneading dough or grinding lentils was a temporary respite. The end results were amazing: brightly coloured and full of freshness, not packaged for convenience and thrown together in disposable haste; answers so clear that it was impossible not to see them.
Packing the soft fabrics suffused with aroma and colour as passionate as the people who had made them, I said goodbye to Krishna’s family. His mother wept. Krishna took me to the airport and as I was saying goodbye, I handed him an envelope. As I sat on the plane, I took my Ammamma’s letters and placed them at the very bottom of my handbag and there, I saw Krishna’s returned envelope with a note scribbled, ‘Maya, you have given me enough, find what you are looking for and come back.’ I knew there would come a time when I would revisit all my letters but for now, other things were pending. I wanted to savour everything that India had given me; a sense of peace and stability like I had never felt before. I sat there on the aircraft thinking about it all, when my thoughts were interrupted by a gushing sound. The airline was spraying disinfectant on the plane hoping that whatever we brought back was not contagious.
Perhaps sensing that he was losing me, Marcos came to meet me at the airport. I didn’t tell him exactly which flight I was taking so he must have waited there for hours. He came with a bunch of white lilies. I never thought he heard me when I said they were my favourite, overriding the conversation we were having with friends by talking about the make of a particular vase they had in their dining room. It was the first time I had ever received flowers from him, simple scented lilies, just as I loved. ‘Maya, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking whilst you have been away and you cannot possibly imagine how much I have missed you. How was it?’
What could I possibly say so that he would understand? That India had revived a part of me that was lying dormant? That colours, aromas, contradictions, emotions from the place that we are from are born with us, and at some point we are asked to rediscover them? That I had caught a glimpse of the pace?
‘It was good,’ I replied.
As we got into the car, he looked at me and said, ‘Maya, I have come to realise how much I love you. I am ready to move out of Palmadoro, I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’m ready. Here, I have something for you.’
Isn’t it a funny thing when the things that you most want come and they don’t seem as important any more. He produced a single solitaire diamond ring. ‘Will you, Maya? Will you marry me? Te quiero, Maya, cariño. ¿lo sabes no?’
Sometimes we are not ready to face whatever it is we have to or maybe things are sent along to distract us from all that we resolve to do. Would she have been disappointed? I thought. No, she would have understood.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mr Gonzalez del Hoyo, I will be your wife.’
Enrique was delighted with the samples. ‘Cariño, just what I was thinking of. You got the colours right as well. This purple will work so well for the autumn collection. What do you think, Maya?’ I smiled as he showed me the designs for the fabric.
‘Maya, there has been something I have been meaning to ask you. How would you like to set up an office for me in London? We need a base there and you’ve lived in London, haven’t you?’
London. It took me by shock. London. I couldn’t go there. I thought momentarily of Amma and all the questions I had for her and then of Marcos, this man I was tied to. Yes, there was Marcos, I couldn’t leave him; he needed me, I loved him, he had his faults but I loved him. London was out of the question.
‘I’m getting married, Enrique. I can’t just go to London, not now.’
He mumbled something about Marcos, but I didn’t hear exactly what he said and I chose not to ask him to repeat it.
Work continued amongst a host of wedding plans which I left with María Carmen who was only too delighted to accept responsibility. I absolutely loved my work and took every opportunity that Enrique gave me. I never noticed the hours as they flew by; it wasn’t like I was trying to distract myself from all the things that I had in my mind, I was just waiting, waiting for the right moment. Then four months later, an opportunity came to visit a few clients in the States like I knew it would. It only took a week to visit them all in New York and then I caught a flight to Chicago.
Ravi’s parents lived there and I thought momentarily of paying Fingers a visit but this idea soon evaporated at the thought of her insisting that I stay with her. I checked into a hotel and then called a cab. The cab driver took me to the address that I had taken from one of Raul’s letterheads. Excuses, always excuses. Sometimes the truth is staring you in the face but you don’t want to see it. ‘Maya, I tried calling several times but there was no connection.’ ‘I left you a message, didn’t you get it?’ ‘Maya, I won’t be able to make it now in the summer, are you around in the fall?’ ‘Maya, I can’t talk right now, I’ll call you back or better still, I’ll write.’ Then the fragmented shorthand would come to me with a note saying how much he loved me, along with a cheque.
I rang the apartment intercom and a voice asked me who I was. ‘I’m looking for Raul,’ I said.
‘Sure, come on up,’ said the young man’s voice.
I walked two flights of stairs and the apartment door was left open.
Not very big for an oil tycoon, I thought.
A very handsome man emerged from behind the door and I was taken aback. ‘I’m sorry t
o disturb you but does Raul live here?’
‘Yeah, he does, but he’s not in at the moment. Come on in and take a seat, he shouldn’t be long,’ he replied, showing me to a hideous red leather sofa.
‘I’m Maya. His …’ My voice trailed off.
‘A friend from England?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, wondering who he could be.
‘Dad’s always talking about his time in England.’
Dad? This was his son? He couldn’t be, he was around the same age as me. ‘Dad?’ I repeated, looking around at the pictures of strangers on the side table, holding my composure.
‘Can’t you tell? Everyone says we look so alike. I’m Ralf,’ he said in his plastic voice.
‘Raul doesn’t look old enough,’ I said, trying to figure out his age.
‘He does, I’m only twenty-two,’ he laughed.
He was three years younger than me, my father was still married to Amma, we were selling up things to move to England, Ammamma was left at the gate in the rain.
‘And your mother?’ I blurted.
He looked confused. ‘She is back in Ohio with my little sister, they’re not together any more. Do you have brothers and sisters?’
What? I thought, I wanted to choke. Did I have brothers and sisters? ‘I have … had two,’ I said, choking.
‘Can I get you something to drink, coffee, something cold?’ he asked.
Something to drink? Something to drink? What was he talking about?
He got me a glass of water.
‘And your sister? How old is she?’ I managed.
‘Jemma’s eighteen,’ he replied, puzzled.
Eighteen. That made me seven when he had her and Satchin nine. He left us living in a hovel so he could play house with another family. I looked up and saw a vain solitary picture of him placed proudly on an awful mahogany sideboard. I wanted to get up and spit on it.
‘Is that your sister?’ I asked, walking over to the sideboard, looking at a picture of the three of them. She was sitting on his back, oh yes that pathetic piggyback ride that Satchin and I fought to have.
‘Yeah, but that was taken a long time ago, she doesn’t look anything like that now.’
Next to it was another picture of the two of them with a Labrador. ‘Tikko,’ I stammered.
‘Yeah, how did you know that?’
I wanted to scream. ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered.
Aya’s words rang in my ears. ‘He loved himself.’ I moved towards the door.
‘He shouldn’t be too long. He’ll be really disappointed that he missed you,’ he said, looking over at the door.
‘Somehow I don’t think so,’ I replied, opening it.
Ralf looked confused.
‘I’m sure he won’t be long,’ he insisted. ‘Shall I tell him that you’ll come again or give me a number where you are staying and I’ll get him to call you.’
‘No,’ I replied, as I tried not to run in my haste to get out. ‘No, don’t do that.’
‘She married a mistake, she married a mistake,’ the words screamed again and again in my head as I ran down the stairs. I got out of that building as fast as I could and was immediately sick on the pavement. He was not my father; he had never been a father and was better dead.
The fear of rejection is bigger than the actual state but he had made it easier by slowly chipping away, not handing it to me in one big block. Unlike me who rejected all those who really mattered. Thoughts of Amma came to me as I got myself together. Almost four years of silence, I had rejected her, made her suffer. After first meeting Raul, every subsequent word I spoke to her was full of hatred and it got to a point where I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her at all. All those years I made Ravi Thakker feel useless, yet he was the only thing that was ever solid in our lives. Satchin didn’t meet Raul again; years that I had filled with remorse that Satchin didn’t get to see him were replaced by gratitude. How is it possible to get things so wrong? I wanted to take a plane home, hold Amma and say that I was sorry, so sorry for everything I had put her through but guilt overwhelmed me and I didn’t know where to start. It was better without me; maybe they were better as they were, getting on with things. I caught the plane back to Spain. Throughout the journey, I just kept thinking, ‘When you are ready, the truth will come and find you.’
Peroxide blonde hair in the bathtub that he said belonged to the black-haired cleaning lady, Lucía. Reliable Lucía, mother of two, had suddenly decided to go blonde? A woman with the same hair colour came up to him for a slow dance at a friend’s wedding. ‘Go on, it’s okay, dance with the lady,’ I said to Marcos, not even thinking. Marcos Gonzalez del Hoyo was probably a lot like Raul Kartha or Kathi or whatever he called himself. Magnetic, yet showing vulnerability when he sensed he was losing, not deep vulnerability but just enough so you became hooked on the pattern of making things better because you thought the fault resided in you. Trying harder, giving more, until most of yourself had gone and before you knew it, there was really nothing left. Control. It had a lot to do with control and power. How could he have left her with two small children and not even care?
Instead of going to Palmadoro on the weekend that I landed, I took a week off work so I could piece things together in my head. As I went for a walk that first morning, I saw the lady with her two dogs, her head was lowered and she didn’t glance up. ‘Hola,’ I said again and when she looked sideways, I saw her eye was black and bruised. She stayed in my mind that entire day and the day after that. I wanted to run after her and tell her she deserved better, that she was worth more, deserved much more. I sat and thought about how much of myself I had compromised to be acceptable to another, how much I refused to see things to make myself feel secure and all along everything was as secure as I believed it to be. Marcos kept calling. It was finally time to do something. I took a train to Palmadoro later that evening. Marcos said that he would come and collect me from the station. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll make my own way.’
When I walked in the door, white lilies were waiting on the table. It was very late and he had not arrived back from work. I fell asleep, exhausted. He did not wake me when he came home as he normally did. The next morning, I said we needed to talk but he was rushing off and said that he would make sure he came home early and we would go out for dinner. María Carmen called to say that she would be coming over to show me some wedding invitations. I wanted to tell her no, stop, but it was already too late. She had put the receiver down and was on her way. Maybe it was too late. This was the day my father Ravi called to say Maggie was ill.
The plane landed at Heathrow airport; it was raining and grey. There was a knot in my stomach: anxiety, relief, happiness, apprehension, sorrow, weariness, all rolled up in a tight ball, waiting. Before we got off the plane, I asked the air hostess if she would be flying back to Spain. ‘Yes,’ she smiled. I handed over the coat with some money for postage and an address where she could send it. I attached a note to María Carmen saying that I was very sorry and that I would call to explain.
My father and my sister were waiting at the airport. I left my trolley and ran over to them. Shorty had grown so tall. I hugged them both, squeezing out all the years I had been without them. ‘Amma?’ I cried.
‘She’s back home, cooking for you.’
‘And Maggie?’
‘Maggie is very ill, Maya, I don’t think she has very long.’ He tried to prepare me.
I was so desperate to see Amma but half an hour would not make any difference to the time that had already gone. Maggie needed me. I needed to see her.
‘Can we drive by and see Maggie first?’
Ammu looked at me shyly. She didn’t say very much and throughout the car journey, there was none of her parrot chatter. I asked her questions and she said very little.
Ravi dropped me off in front of Maggie’s house and said he would go home, tell Amma where I was and come and collect me in an hour. He and Ammu drove off. I stood outside her door and waited. I d
on’t know what I was waiting for but as I wiped my tears, I rang the doorbell. An African lady opened it.
‘You must be Maya,’ she said. ‘Your mother left an hour ago and she said you would be coming.’ She smiled as she showed me in.
There was no odour that lingered of warm lamb stew, electric heating or wax from candles. It smelt of sterile bleach. The green carpet on the staircase was worn and dirty. The pictures still hung on her landing: one of a sheep dog, another of Tom; Satchin and me holding Ammu and one of Maggie and Jack. Jack had died a few months ago; I hadn’t made it to the funeral. The African lady, Joyce, was talking to me but I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about the times I came running down these stairs. ‘Not so fast, Maya, you’ll ruin the carpet,’ Maggie would say. It now looked like sundried moss. The last time I ran down them I was filled with disgust and contempt for what she had told me and didn’t want to believe it. It hardly mattered. Joyce opened Maggie’s bedroom door and said, ‘Maggie, I have someone to see you.’ There was no reply, no Maggie laugh. I walked in and there she was, lying in bed, almost unrecognisable.
Soft, pallid, white skin hanging from her face, she looked half her weight, with a red scarf tied around her head, her blue eyes set deep into her face as if they were preparing to say goodbye. She looked at me and tried to smile. ‘Maya, darling,’ she managed. I went over to her, put my arms around her frail body and kissed her forehead. ‘At last,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t say anything, Maggie.’
She took a deep breath and said, ‘Did you find it in Spain?’
‘Yes and no,’ I cried. ‘Why didn’t you call me earlier, Maggie?’
She closed her eyes. Joyce came and moved her head slightly so she would be more comfortable.
Joyce told me that the two people she kept calling for over and over again in her sleep were Tom and myself. They could not find Tom. Ravi had looked but had had no luck. ‘She’s holding on,’ said Joyce, ‘She’s a fighter.’
Nobody had called me earlier to say how ill she was, that was probably her doing. She was as stubborn as any person I have ever met. Sitting in a little pair of high-fashion tan corduroy trousers that she made me when I was eight, we were arguing at her dinner table. ‘You are not leaving the table, Maya, until you eat all those vegetables up. There are people going hungry for that.’