English Lessons and Other Stories

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  A square of blue window balanced on the bedposts and she leaned close against the pane. A precise ant-stream flowed below and the drivers in their cars seemed to know just where they wanted to be, just where they wanted to go. It was seven o’clock, and still no sign of Ratan. Perhaps he went to visit one of his sisters.

  She had first met Ratan’s sisters when all three — with husbands and children — flew back to India for their wedding. They had been guests of honour decked in wedding finery, guarantors of certain prosperity for the groom, introduced to all her father’s friends as “Devika’s Canadian sisters-in-law.” She knew her father had no idea Vandana Di made her husband help with the children and the dishes. Or that Kavali Di’s daughter worked as a model for a lingerie catalogue. In Canada, she found it more difficult to sort the good girls from the bad ones. It is important to have both, because if there are no bad girls, how would anyone know that girls like Devika are good? Would her mother like her youngest sister-in-law, Bindiya Di, whose passion for butter chicken and kofta curry had imprisoned her, bat-like in her caftans, before a daily stack of rented Indian movies? They were Ratan’s family, she reminded herself, and she was duty-bound to love them.

  Grey monoliths thrust deep into a tender mauve sky. Along them hung broken chains of light, and Devika realized it was now almost eight o’clock. She went into the kitchen, stirred the mattar-panneer and wondered if she dared call Ratan at work. Could he have had an accident? Quickly through the living room to the balcony. But there was no break in the necklace of twin-diamonded cars glowing on the collarbone of the Don Valley. Terror hit her low in the stomach; she could see no people in other apartments, there were no people walking along the side of the road, no people sitting on the scraps of green between the expressways. No people. A country with more acres of land than people.

  What, thought Devika, would she do if Ratan died?

  Ratan’s hands were light on the wheel. His left foot tapped a disco rhythm to the Hindi film song filling the car. A good day, really, a good day. Peter Kendall, the grey-haired vice-president, had noticed him. After three years on the job, Peter Kendall had invited him to join a few of the brokers at a pub for beer after work. He’d said “awesome” at least five times and laughed into the Molson beer at all the jokes. He hadn’t mentioned that Peter Kendall had never invited him before. He’d been quiet in all the right places, especially when the talk moved to “foreigners getting jobs in Canadian companies, eh?” He hadn’t responded when someone wondered “why those immigrants don’t leave their battles at home.” And he just might be invited again — unless he made Peter Kendall mad.

  In Indian English, mad means crazy. In Canadian English, it just means angry, but when Peter Kendall got mad Ratan couldn’t tell the difference. One time, he thought Peter Kendall would have a fit explaining the need for the Canada – US free trade agreement to Ratan, and just a week ago Mr. Kendall had asked him to sit at another table in the employees’ lounge because he said the smell of the curry Devika packed for Ratan’s lunch was enough to make him sick.

  So today was progress. And, thinking of progress, Devika seemed to be making fine progress. She had settled in and was keeping house as if she’d lived here all her life, instead of just two months. It would take her a few tries to pass her driver’s test — after all, it had taken him two tries, even with his brother-in-laws’ guidance, as he learned how to drive on the right. His parents had chosen well for him. Now his mother’s description of Devika as a convent-educated, “homely” girl made him smile. In Indian English, homely means domestic. In Canadian English, homely means ugly. Devika was far from ugly. Her face was too round to be considered beautiful in Canada, but quite attractive. She had a good figure, maybe a little plump for Canada, but passable… desirable.

  Maybe she could make a few changes, though. Her clothes, for instance. She looked like one of those Indian women who promenade on Gerrard Street on Sunday evenings, teetering in their high-heeled sandals on the slushy sidewalks, examining racks of ready-made salwar kameezes from India and gossiping about the Hindi film stars. Whereas he… he was moving up in life now. He tried to imagine Devika in a black velvet skirt and a white silk jacquard blouse, like Peter Kendall’s wife.

  He thought he should reciprocate Peter Kendall’s hospitality. Now that Devika was here, he could invite him and Mrs. Kendall to dinner. The apartment looked quite nice with the new couch and coffee table he’d bought from one of the furniture dealers on Kennedy Street. They would have to buy drapes and a better dinner set — English china, if possible — and a set of larger serving bowls, he thought. But the evening would be an investment in his future.

  As he pressed the remote door-opener to enter the dark cave of the underground garage, he decided Devika must wear a dress. And pantyhose, and no nose ring.

  It was ten o’clock when Devika heard Ratan’s key in the door of the apartment. She uncoiled her body from its fear-knotted ball on the couch to greet him as he set his briefcase down and picked up the Star.

  “I went out for a drink with the guys at work,” he said.

  “Mmmhmm.” She started the Kishore Kumar tape over again. The chicken curry was falling off the bone, but she was so relieved that he was not dead and she left alone in a strange country that she didn’t care. The fear still followed her like a shadow as he talked at her through the swinging doors to the narrow kitchen.

  “Pete asked me to attend.”

  “Pete?”

  “Peter Kendall.”

  He’d told her about Peter Kendall before, but he’d never called him Pete.

  “You must be hungry,” she said.

  “Use napkins under the hot dishes, Devika,” he ordered. “Otherwise the dining table might lose its colour.”

  He lifted the cover of a serving dish, “Mattar-panneer?”

  “Don’t you like mattar-panneer?”

  “You must try and learn some Chinese and Italian dishes, too. I want to ask Pete Kendall and his wife to dinner next month. We must buy a barbecue for the balcony and by then we will have bought drapes — curtains — and maybe a new dinner set.” He took in her silk salwar kameez but all he said was, “You need to buy some Canadian clothes, Devika. Try a skirt and blouse — it might suit you.”

  She changed the subject. “Why Chinese or Italian food? When they come, I will make them Indian food.”

  “No, no. Peter Kendall doesn’t like the smell of curry.”

  “He doesn’t like that powder they sell at Loblaws. I’m sure he’s never had proper curry.”

  “One would think the recipe for proper curry was written in the Vedas. No, Devika — no curry. Besides,” he said, loosening his tie, “I’m tired of curry. Make something else.”

  “Achcha.” She hated arguments. “When… when will they be coming?”

  “We didn’t fix a date yet.”

  Devika had set the table for dinner hours ago, using the plates Ratan had bought on sale at the IGA store, but now she realized she’d set three places instead of two; Ratan, immersed in the Star, did not notice. There should be more people here. It wasn’t right to have all this food and just the two of them, and no people except those faceless nameless people in cars for miles and miles around. Six or seven relatives, a few college friends or — looking at the table — four. Even if they were only three, it would be an improvement. One relative, maybe a friend.

  Just one friend.

  She placed a generous scoop of rice on his plate, then on her own and then, still musing, on the third plate.

  Ratan lowered the paper and looked at her.

  “Who’s that for?”

  “For my friend. Asha,” said Devika. “She’s hungry, too.” She ladled mattar-panneer and chicken curry on the third plate, and poured a third glass of water as well.

  “I don’t see any Asha,” said Ratan.

  “She’s right here,” said Devika.

  And then she was. Asha, filling an empty chair, making the unfamiliar empty s
pace go away. Not reformed and docile Asha, not the Asha transformed by marriage, or the Asha so proud to have a son, but the old Asha, sitting right here in Toronto, looking at Mr. Right-Can-Do-No-Wrong Ratan with cynical amusement.

  Ratan stood up from the table, scratching his head.

  “Have you lost your mind?” he said.

  She sat still, looking down at her plate. Asha smiled.

  He picked up the offending plate and took it into the kitchen. She heard it slam on the Formica counter. Then he strode past her into the bedroom and soon she heard a small grunt as he took off his shoes. He came back barefoot, a comfort she’d heard him call an “ethnic” habit.

  And there was the plate again, in front of Asha.

  He shrugged. “Stop being stubborn, Devika, there’s no one here.”

  “Asha is here.”

  He shook his head. “Women,” he said.

  Asha said to Devika, “Watch him think he can ignore me till I go away.”

  They ate in wary silence, and the plate remained. After dinner, Devika washed and dried the dishes and stood on the balcony.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m showing Asha the lights of the CN Tower,” she said.

  “Come to bed.” Irritation in the command.

  A blue aerogramme slipped away and she watched it flutter down the Don Valley.

  On Sunday at Vandana Di’s house Ratan expounded on hot stocks to the men, neat J & B scotch swirling in a glass in his hand like the tawny golden eye of a tiger. Devika was in the kitchen with his sisters, and he felt liberated. Devika’s Asha had begun to really grate on him. A little pretence lent a new wife a certain enigmatic charm; in fact, pretence could be quite romantic. But to invent a whole person who inhabited their new apartment and had to be fed and clothed… surely his parents should have checked with someone — Devika’s family, neighbours, friends — someone should have known about these… well, hallucinations. Should he indulge her or should he put a stop to it? Ratan had been pointedly silent to show her his displeasure, a technique his father had used to good effect on his mother, but it wasn’t working on Devika.

  “Asha wants to go for a walk,” Devika said after serving breakfast for three on Saturday. And then, instead of going to the grocery store in the car with Ratan, she took the elevator and he watched from the bedroom window as her tiny lone figure left the building. She scurried rabbit-like to the Philippine convenience store on the corner, and he watched till she emerged, saw her run all the way home, dupatta streaming behind her, as though Ravan himself were in pursuit. By the time she reached the apartment, he was back on the couch and absorbed in his stock analysis sheets, a briefcase of very important papers open on the coffee table before him.

  Asha liked different clothes, too. Last week, Devika showed him slick American magazines full of disdainful sullen-faced white women and pointed out the cowboy jean jackets and high-heeled boots that Asha liked. At last she was interested in something Canadian, so Ratan took her to Fairview Mall to buy them, and she tried them on for Asha — “Asha and I are the same size.” But when they returned home, she locked them away in Asha’s closet in the little bedroom. That, at any rate, was proper. He approved; he wouldn’t want strange men to see her dressed in those clothes. But she’d locked away the high-heeled black patent leather shoes and the lingerie, as well. She was wasting his money.

  One evening, there was the unmistakable smell of cigarette smoke and all the windows were open.

  “Were you smoking?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” Devika replied. “Asha likes a cigarette sometimes, it must have been her.”

  Asha, it turned out, didn’t like the cheaper Canadian cigarettes — she liked Benson and Hedges. Asha was not neat and careful, like Devika. Devika threaded her rings on her watch strap and clasped the watch to her bedside lamp at night as though she were in a hotel, while Asha left little stubs in ashtrays in the spare bedroom, where the twin-size bed was always immaculate as a convent girl’s, a long-haired doll on the white counterpane. (Ooff! He too was beginning to think of Asha as though she were real.) If Devika wanted to smoke and blame an imaginary woman, he wasn’t going to let her think it bothered him. Besides, he was doing well. Even Peter Kendall had been impressed when he’d brought in three new clients this month. Ratan hadn’t mentioned the last one was a Jew.

  Asha’s tastes were getting more expensive. Cocoa and bokchoy and marmite and marinated artichoke hearts. And now, “Asha wants a camera,” Devika had informed him last night.

  Maybe the camera was the answer. A new toy. It would distract Devika from this Asha nonsense, and she could take pictures from the balcony and send them to her parents. She was always complaining how homesick she felt. Then, when Devika was normal again, he could ask Peter Kendall and his wife to dinner.

  He turned to his brothers-in-law. They were older, they must be consulted about expensive things like cameras. “I plan to buy a camera,” he said. “What would you suggest?”

  His brothers-in-law drew round in solemn solidarity. They considered, eyes raised to the ceiling, hands deep in their pockets or twirling mustaches. Judgements were pronounced with finality.

  “Nikon, bhai. Best. Top of the line.”

  “Ricoh, bhai. Can’t miss.

  “Get a Canon, Baba. You can always sell it in India.”

  He wouldn’t take any of their advice, of course. If he took one brother- in-law’s advice, the other two would be insulted. But if he hadn’t asked for advice they would all have been mortally wounded for a month.

  Yes. A camera would be just the right thing.

  Vandana Di came out of the kitchen bringing the smell of rice and warm lemons. Ratan felt himself tense in case Devika had been talking about Asha. But naturally Vandana had been talking to Devika about her brother, not about Devika.

  “So, Baba, when are you going to be promoted?”

  Ratan bought Devika an Olympus camera and a twenty-four-exposure Kodak film, because they were on sale. When he brought it home, he was careful to say, “This is for Asha. I’ll show you how to use it, and you can show her.”

  There wasn’t much to explain about the camera, but he spent an hour advising her on composition, and ASA numbers, and light and the importance of keeping the camera safe. It was the most he had ever spoken to her, and he could feel her listening with appropriate respect, so he was eloquent. He needed her admiration that day. An old client of the firm had called Peter Kendall and accused Ratan of bad judgement in managing his portfolio. Peter Kendall had called him into his office and said, “Mr. Berton doesn’t like a Paki managing his money. He has nothing against you personally, you know. He would just prefer to be with someone else.”

  “I understand,” said Ratan, making his voice cheerful, willing, professional.

  He’d told himself it didn’t matter, and after work he’d stopped at the Hong Kong Camera discount store on Spadina to buy the camera, but then suddenly he’d given in to the anger. Pure anger, making him fight the rush-hour traffic as though he were driving in Delhi again, looping in and out and honking all the way to Little India on Gerrard Street. There he’d eaten chaat with his fingers, like a desi-dihaat from a village, and drunk a brown bottle of warm Rosy Pelican beer, as though daring Peter Kendall to drive by and see him.

  Devika hadn’t said anything about his being late. Hadn’t asked him any questions about his day. Hadn’t even met him at the door. She was in Asha’s room with the door closed, talking. Taking both sides of the conversation, her high-pitched Lata Mangeshkar voice alternating with a lower, sexier, huskier tone. And an occasional laugh (he had never heard Devika laugh), a knowing, Asha laugh.

  “What were you laughing at?” “Asha was saying how white-skinned people think they look clean all the time so they don’t bathe. Chi, dirty people.”

  She was, however, enchanted by the camera. She took his picture immediately. Then another and another. He was flattered, posing for her on the new couch,
at the smoked-glass dining table, on the balcony, with the CN Tower behind. She stopped only when he told her not to finish the roll because, after all, film is expensive.

  But when they sat down at the table, there were three place settings again. Devika’s plate had the camera beside it, lens pointed straight at Ratan. And as he, with mystified conscientiousness, watched the Maple Leafs play ice hockey on his new TV in the living room, Devika brought halwa in three dessert plates. And later he dreamed he was late for a meeting with Mr. Kendall and woke, sweating and in need of a woman, and he reached for her… but she was gone.

  Ratan swore under his breath and found himself in Asha’s room, and there was Devika, curled up on the white counterpane, asleep under a shawl. He scooped her up at the waist as though gathering a wayward kitten, and she fought his strength, his embrace, his very touch until he had her on the king-size bed and showed her struggle is futile.

  He left early the next morning without breakfast, so she would feel appropriately guilty, and he went to bed without sitting down to dinner. He heard her with Asha at the dining table, talking like a crazy person to the air.

  Devika rose at five in the morning. Ratan liked her to make alloo parathas for breakfast and a sandwich for his lunch and it took time. But last night, Asha and she had stayed up late, talking as they had in school, and now Devika was sleepy.

  Asha was again the girl she used to be in college, before she was transformed by marriage. She was there, sitting cross-legged on the twin bed, angered as she used to be by things Devika never questioned, and they’d spent most of the night arguing, discussing. Asha wanted things Devika had never wanted. Asha wanted to take driving lessons. Asha wanted to visit Niagara Falls. Asha wanted to take flying lessons at Brampton Airport, instead of going and visiting Vandana Di every Sunday. Asha wanted to climb the CN Tower and go to Canada’s Wonderland all alone. Asha wanted to know how it felt to ride a horse bareback. Asha thought love should make a woman feel like a banana split with all three scoops melting inside. Asha wanted to ride a fork-lift truck and wear a hard hat and overalls. Asha wanted to drive all the way to Vancouver with a CB radio and a trucker who could sing woeful country ballads. Asha wanted to talk and have someone listen, someone besides Devika. That strong will, that unfettered enthusiasm for every experience, that appetite. That unadulterated, unmasked, selfishness. Haw, ji, haw… Shame! Devika had tried to reason with her all night.