by Leah Franqui
Writing from Washington DC just now. Philadelphia success. Bus tour good. Very much history. Madam slightly overtired following long ride. Rebecca companion helpful.
Second night excellent lamb. Madam happy with baingan ka bharta despite ghee no mustard oil, would not let me return it to the kitchen. Washington very nice. Clean. Bus tour good. Madam commented on white buildings and giant Lincoln. Dinner with Rebecca companion family featuring pasta meal and genuine American evening. Very success. Possible addition to trips with companion?
Satya
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Mr. Munshi,
Just reporting from DC. Philadelphia went well, although Mrs. Sengupta had a moment of feeling faint, so Satya and I are trying to make sure she stays hydrated. I took Satya to see a play, I hope that’s okay, it was free and Mrs. Sengupta had given us the evening off as she preferred to rest. Satya said it was good but didn’t compare to Bollywood. Otherwise Mrs. Sengupta enjoyed the city. She had never seen streets made of cobblestones.
Washington has been fine, the bus tour was very informative and hit all the normal tourist hot spots. Mrs. Sengupta told us the city reminds her of a cemetery but she liked Georgetown, asking if the same person had made the streets in both cities. We had dinner with my parents this evening so that Mrs. Sengupta could experience a genuine American dinner. This was also free.
Flying out tomorrow to New Orleans. Will check in from there. Everyone is safe and sound.
Best,
Rebecca
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear. Mr. Munshi—
Hello, Mr. Munshi, I am Pival Sengupta writing from Washington DC in the United States. How is your health and that of your family? May the blessings and favor of the gods be with you and protect you.
The trip is most satisfactory. It is an excellent experience of America. I have a wonderful companion and guide. I only wish it was not so cold, and that the Indian food was better.
Thank you for your arrangements. Everything that you have done has been most helpful.
Respectfully,
Pival Sengupta
Reading through his emails in his office as milky tea spilled weakly down his shirtfront, Ronnie frowned. A genuine American dinner? That was a magnificent idea. He wished he had thought of it himself. His mind buzzing with ideas, he called Anita. Perhaps she would agree to host it. They could order food from local diners or that restaurant that served only rotisserie chicken, and Anita could wear jeans and he would trot out one of his many American flag T-shirts. They could find some Americans somewhere to bring; it would be perfect.
“Big Nose! I’m glad you called.”
That was odd, Ronnie thought. Anita was never happy he called.
“I’ve booked us a cruise.”
Ronnie started to protest. There was too much to do, he couldn’t take a vacation, what on earth was she talking about, with what money? He could almost hear her rolling her eyes over the phone.
“Yours. What else? We’re going. No excuses.” Ronnie tried to explain about the American dinner idea, but Anita started laughing halfway through.
“A genuine American dinner? What would we know about that?”
“We’re Americans.”
“Fine. I’ll host dinner. When we come back from Greece. Relax, Big Nose, they have rice there. I promise.” The phone went dead. Ronnie sighed, and then he smiled. She had agreed to the dinners. And after managing so many vacations, he was going to go on one. Plus, on a boat. Win-win-win.
For someone who had lived most of his life in one place, Satya was getting used to waking up in different beds in different cities. Their flight to New Orleans had left DC the morning before at eight a.m., and the sleepy trio, or rather duet, as Mrs. Sengupta regularly woke early and found five a.m. not so different from six a.m., had huddled in the airport waiting to board a flight where they would spend almost as much time ascending and descending as they would flying through the air. This was their first flight together and Pival seemed nervous, while Rebecca had no reaction other than a strong interest in coffee. Satya merely wanted breakfast. He longed for eggs scrambled with lentils and sweet milky tea as he surveyed the doughy items in the glass case of one overpriced airport café with disgust. Why was everything round? He forwent eating anything and trudged back to the gate as their seats were called for boarding.
At home he and Ravi used to visit the same tea stall daily, bartering with the owner to pay less and trying to catch glimpses of his daughter. They would drink their cooling tea and crush the clay cups it came in under their heels as the city awoke. He wondered what Ravi was doing now. Had his mother responded to Satya’s letter? He kept trying to write her another, but the words looked stupid on the page. He had settled for a postcard instead, a New York one he had bought quickly before they left the city, and scribbled a few words on it, telling her that all was well. He hoped, by saying that, that it would become true.
Satya’s newly minted New York state ID gave him no trouble whatsoever in airport security, though he wondered if that was due to traveling with Rebecca. Rebecca talked to him in a funny way in public places, with more familiarity than she did in private. She touched his arm gently, she made sure to stand with him if ever he spoke to authorities, and she smiled, all the time, at everyone. He knew what she was doing and he hated it, but it did seem to make life easier. It left him feeling torn between annoyance and gratitude.
He wondered what Ravi would have thought of Rebecca. Every day it felt more strange, more surreal, that he was moving farther and farther away from him, that he was seeing so many things Ravi had never seen. In a way that he couldn’t understand, it also made him feel good. It made him feel superior to Ravi, worldly and wise. Their lives together were so small in comparison to the falls, or the ancient glass, or the giant statue of Lincoln, or the play.
The play had been wonderful. It was long, and sometimes boring, but he was too well acquainted with Bollywood movies to expect something to entertain him every minute of its duration. There would always be things he enjoyed and things he ignored. Usually it was the love stories he ignored, except when the women were dressed in scantily cut saris. He loved the action sequences, and the details about people’s lives. He hated the family moments, the brothers loving and betraying brothers, the mothers torn down by the system but somehow remaining virtuous. Why did mothers always have to be destroyed to be good people? Why did they have to be destroyed at all?
This play had been about family, though, and about love, but in a way he had not ever seen before in any movie. The people had seemed so real to him. Their lives were familiar, and the way they talked reminded him of the hallways of his building back home, when people had talked over and around each other, picking up conversations and putting them down again like plates on and off the table. The characters had been stuck in their lives. He could have been like that, he knew. He could have become one of the men he and Ravi saw every day, drinking cheap liquor until they passed out on the street, until their wives came and helped them to walk home, the women’s faces shaded by scarves.
He had watched class after class above him in school succumb to that same cycle, smart boys felled by some invisible blow, something getting stuck inside of them that caught them and pinned them into place. Some of them had briefly struggled, some had just given in. Few of them had ever thought of leaving home. If he had not had Ravi, if his grandmother had not died, he might even now have been drinking himself into a stupor, content just thinking about America. Now he had America. But no one else. At least the three sisters in the play had had each other, he thought. But maybe that trapped them, too. He was alone, and for the first time he felt free in a way he had not anticipated. If he hadn’t taken the job, if he’d left it to Ravi, he never would have seen a play.
He slept on the flight, and when he woke up and looked out the window as th
ey landed in New Orleans, all he saw was muddy expanses of green land and brown water, and for one horrible moment he thought he had been taken back home to Bangladesh. Instead, he was just in another part of America.
Their driver from the airport this time was a white man. Satya had never been driven anywhere by a white man. The driver, Luc, spoke in a deep and melodic voice that Satya could barely understand, although he nodded along in the front seat, assuming that was the polite thing to do. He caught Rebecca’s eyes once as he looked up into the rearview mirror, and her expression was horrified. He shrugged and kept on nodding. The only things he had really been sure that the man said were a question about their destination (the Hampton Inn and Suites New Orleans Downtown/French Quarter), which Satya had pointed out to him on his neatly printed and laminated list of all their accommodation destinations, and a question about where Satya was from because you sure don’t look like you’re from Louisiana! Once he had told Luc he was from Bangladesh, the driver had proceeded to make a series of statements in a kind of half English with most of the syllables either chopped in two or lengthened into five. Satya thought he had heard words he knew in between others he couldn’t identify, but every time he had opened his mouth to ask a question the stream of monologue had already rushed ahead.
Once they left the car, Rebecca looked at Satya speculatively. He looked down. He had not known quite how to talk to her since the play. She had been so strange that night, inviting him and then taking him to the odd bar filled with loud actors and drinking so much. He had watched her become a different person several times over within the space of a few hours. She had seemed angry, no matter how many wide smiles she had given her friend or the other people they met. And then they had met her parents, who were odd, sharp people, who made her turn both brittle and soft in their presence, but he envied all of them, just for existing. She had seemed like a little girl with them, sullen and spoiled and rebellious, but he had also seen himself. Neither of them was in the place their families wanted them to be. He marveled at how fast he was learning about her. He’d seen so many layers of her built up and stripped away. He still wondered what she looked like naked.
“Did you understand what he was saying to you?” Rebecca asked outside the cab.
“Of course I did!” Satya was annoyed, his empathy for her burning up instantly. He spoke English perfectly, did he not? Conveniently forgetting just how little of the driver’s words he had actually understood, he let his swirl of emotions concerning Rebecca transform themselves into anger at her disrespect.
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t know you were so against race mixing. That guy was so adamant about reviving the death penalty for marriage between different races, I am surprised you agreed. Also surprised you agreed about the superiority of the white race. I had no idea you thought that.”
Rebecca picked up her bag and walked into the hotel. Mrs. Sengupta was staring at him, her eyes wide and her mouth open. He looked at her helplessly, willing her to understand that he didn’t feel that way, he simply hadn’t understood and didn’t want Rebecca to know. The tension strung out between them as Satya grew more and more desperate to make her understand without knowing what words to say.
“Satya?” She sounded like his grandmother. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He was more ashamed than he ever had been of a dirty magazine tucked in between his sheets. He felt the way he had felt when Grandmother had soiled herself in her bed when she was sick and he didn’t have the courage to overcome his disgust and clean her up immediately and she moaned in pain and shame and he could only listen, knocking his head against the wall until it hurt so badly he couldn’t see straight.
“Did you understand anything that man was saying to you after he asked you where you were from?” Satya shook his head slowly, tears coming to his eyes. He was breaking Ronnie’s rule, he knew, he was admitting ignorance, which a good tour guide never does. He was debasing himself in front of Mrs. Sengupta. She would reject him now, she would hate him, she would cancel the trip, she would get him fired. It was over now, and he reached for his bag to trudge to the nearest bus station, for he would quit before she could fire him, and preserve himself in some way—
Suddenly Mrs. Sengupta began to laugh. She laughed with a deep throaty chuckle, which was completely at odds with her quiet voice. Her laugh sprang from her chest beautifully and fully, and as Satya looked at her, amazed, tears appeared in her eyes matching the ones of shame in his own. He did not understand what was happening until Mrs. Sengupta regained her breath and spoke again.
“I am so relieved to hear this, Satya. Because, you see, neither did I!” And she laughed again, her eyes dancing. Satya felt a sudden lightness in his chest as his body relaxed and his face lost its hysterical tightness. He would not have to quit in disgrace or be fired in a cloud of anger. Mrs. Sengupta was happy he had not understood. It was something they shared.
Mrs. Sengupta wasn’t interested in the bus tour of the day, so instead they spent the afternoon in the hotel, Satya bored out of his mind, flipping from channel to channel on the tiny room television.
The next day, they set out on their tour of the French Quarter after a breakfast in the hotel, which included a soft fried pastry with an unpronounceable name that was a local delicacy. It tasted the way a pillow felt, but Satya ate six, to be polite. Rebecca watched him, smiling. He looked back at her defiantly. What did he care what she thought?
They walked through the French Quarter slowly, following a walking tour from Satya’s book and squinting to make out different details as he narrated them in rapid succession. Satya himself was unsure which place was which. The masses of brick and stone and wood, while beautiful, all looked the same to him. There were so many banks. How could he tell the difference between the Old Bank of Louisiana and the Old Louisiana State Bank? They were built almost at exactly the same time, sitting across from each other in the crowded streets of the Quarter. Despite the tiny area, trying to find and identify all the mansions belonging to dead men with French and Spanish names left Satya, and therefore Mrs. Sengupta and Rebecca, hopelessly lost. By the time they reached the St. Louis Cathedral Satya was on the verge of giving up, when he saw another tour group listening patiently to a man speaking loudly over the noise of the street.
Satya sidled up to the other tour. It was hot in New Orleans and Mrs. Sengupta’s ever-present water bottle was in constant use. She also had, in the depths of her bag, a paper fan, which she produced now and began to wave at herself. Across the street, a group of African American women about her age were doing the same, walking down the street slowly with large-brimmed hats, fanning themselves intermittently. They nodded and smiled at Mrs. Sengupta, identifying her as one of their own, a proud older woman with a fan in hand. Mrs. Sengupta seemed confused by this, but Rebecca grinned broadly at them.
“Hot today, honey! You tell them that!” shouted one of the women cheerfully as they passed by. The other tour guide gave them a wolf whistle, which amused his group to no end. Satya was confused. Ronnie had told him that under no circumstances should he make any kind of commentary about any woman during the course of his time guiding. It seemed odd that someone who was serving others would catcall, let alone at this large black woman who had to be in her fifties at least. Old women should be beyond the reach of that kind of filth, his grandmother had always said. The woman didn’t mind, though; instead she swished her hips provocatively and winked at the man, drawing waves of laughter and applause from the larger tour group.
They listened to this guide, while very much pretending not to listen, or at least, Satya pretended not to listen while Rebecca stood rapt and Mrs. Sengupta found a shady bench to guzzle her water in peace. Satya was struck by the casual nature of the interaction. Every time he had ever been taught something it had been with the understanding that he was stupid and the teacher was a god. As a tour guide Ronnie had had Satya incorporate this idea but tempered it with the understanding of his place in the social hierarchy, that is, he was a serva
nt, and his knowledge would always come second to how the client wished things to be. But this tour guide had none of the subservience Ronnie had drilled into Satya. He spoke with confidence, yes, the way that Satya tried to do, but also with a kind of ease, a comfort with mistakes, a self-deprecation. He let people ask questions, he corrected them when they were wrong. He seemed to be a kind of guardian of the city, for he spoke of New Orleans as if it were his mother, his wife, and his child all in one.
They walked from sight to sight along the French Quarter as the guide described the mixes and clashes of cultures that had created the world of the Creoles, the French and Spanish periods, the city during the Civil War, the shifts and struggles that had blended together disparate peoples in the slow hot saucepan of the city until it had served up something delicious. They walked through the French Market and past the many houses of Southern millionaires, each with a more scandalous story and a more opulent building than the one before. It was a wild city, Satya realized, far smaller than New York but much more colorful, because the color didn’t come from blinking lights but from people, the way they lived and dressed, the smells and the constant music everywhere, pouring out of houses and cars and living in the air.
He liked this place, he realized. It was the first place on their trip he had actually liked, a place he would want to spend more time in, wander through on his own, even if the driver from the airport had been racist. There were spices in the air he recognized—cumin, chili pepper, saffron—and those he didn’t, scents that tickled his nose. His mouth watered for something new. He had never actually liked a city before. Home was home and before he had left Sylhet he hadn’t been many other places in Bangladesh. All the places he had been felt the same to him, village or city, because he had nothing to do there. New York had been hard and overwhelming but it had also been all he knew of America. Now he was starting to see that there were more options here, more than the movies showed and more than the streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. He liked it here. For the first time, having an opinion felt important.