by Aimee E. Liu
Joanna drove on past Jantar Mantar and parked the Austin in front of the stores on the outer ring of Connaught Place. She pretended to window-shop for a few minutes, then drew her scarf up over her head and walked back the few blocks to the observatory. She had received a chit at work that morning, delivered by a boy no one knew. Unsigned, it stated this time, this meeting place, and read, “The message you long await has arrived.”
An iron fence surrounded the park, broken by a single unmanned gate. Inside, a handful of visitors strolled or sat or slept on the massive astrolabes. Through the networks of improbable stairways and deceptive porticoes, figures appeared and disappeared like phantoms. Joanna assumed she was looking for Mr. Chou. She assumed she was being watched. She felt like a fool and, for the first time, saw the advantage of those black upside-down burqas.
She passed a young couple, bent-headed, murmuring, the girl in a jubilant orange and gold sari. Through the fence she could see two brown-shirted Indian policemen sauntering down the street, snapping lathis like riding crops against their thighs, an old man selling paperback books off a pavement blanket.
She ducked under an overhang and stepped through a doorway into a shadowed chamber, then around a corner and out the other side. Curved red walls formed an empty bowl under the silent sky. The city and its millions had completely disappeared.
A footstep sounded behind her. She turned.
He was dressed like an Indian. That is to say, he wore brown trousers, chappals on his feet, an orange and green plaid shirt, argyle sweater vest, and a red knit cap pulled low on his brow. Between his conspicuous attempt at disguise and her own relief, she couldn’t help smiling.
“Mrs. Shaw,” Chou said. “I apologize for meeting like this. But I think it is better.”
“It doesn’t matter. Has my husband answered?”
He nodded. “It is being arranged. Come. Sit with me here.” He led her to a cement bench on the opposite side of the bowl.
“What is being arranged?” she asked.
“You wish to see him.”
“Yes! But…” She was being put off again. “You said there was a message. I expected a letter…”
Chou spread his hands, touching his fingertips together. “He thinks you will not understand. Words on paper are easily misinterpreted.”
Words on paper were Aidan’s life. His refusal to write could also be misinterpreted. Or perhaps he was not being allowed to write.
“There is nothing to do just yet,” Chou said. “It will take some weeks. I think not before April, but you must stay in Delhi until you hear from me. When everything is ready I will send a chit, as I did today. If it does not state a meeting place, you come to our embassy.”
“What about my son? I haven’t told him anything yet, but I’m sure my husband will want to see him.”
“I am afraid this will not be possible. I must remind you, no one may know. If your government learns of our plans, your husband’s life may be endangered.”
A familiar chill of fury and fear traveled the length of her spine, but as usual it was arrested by the simple fact that she didn’t know whom to be furious at. Any more than she knew where this threat of danger truly came from, or where it could lead.
“I understand,” she said miserably.
“Good, I will see you again in a few weeks, then.” He stood, but when she started to rise, he held out his palm. “Please. Stay a few minutes. It is so peaceful here.”
She did as instructed. She didn’t fear Chou. She didn’t like or dislike him. Certainly she didn’t believe that there was anything peaceful about this place. But the longer she sat staring at these high curved walls, the more difficult it became to move.
5
For two weeks I stalled and plotted and chewed my lips raw. I counted and recounted the total of change in my possession so many times that the paise shone clean, but no matter how I calculated, I had only ninety rupees, and I needed one hundred twenty. Finally, on the morning of my first appointed meeting with Jaggu, I sneaked into Mem’s bedroom while she was downstairs finishing breakfast with Simon. I had decided to borrow just enough from the household money hidden in her desk to complete Jaggu’s first payment, to buy another two weeks. With this breathing space, perhaps I would yet find the courage to confide in Mem.
I had to remove the entire drawer in order to reach the small black kidskin purse tucked into a rear corner. I did this hurriedly, and laid the drawer on the bed. The purse contained four twenty-rupee notes, but rather than risk taking more than I needed, I removed only one. The remainder I could borrow from Nagu.
A door slammed downstairs. I held my breath, but no footsteps followed. Without a sound I replaced the purse in its corner and settled the drawer back onto its runner. I did not mean to search Mem’s things. The clutter of pencils and clips and blank stationery held no interest, in any case. But a familiar insignia on one of the other papers caught my eye. An American eagle. This same official seal marked the adoption forms Mr. Weller had given us in Tihwa. For a moment I thought these were the same documents, but then I looked closer. Only the date and the official’s signature and one other name had been filled in. The date marked was October 20, 1950, and the official signature belonged to Ambassador Minton. The form, I now saw, was a visa application for entrance to the United States of America. The lettering below the ambassador’s signature read, “Approved by.” The other name, written by some stranger on the line marked “Applicant,” was my own.
I heard Mem’s voice at the bottom of the stairs. Hardly caring now how much noise I made, I shoved the papers back in the drawer and the drawer back into the desk. I fled down the hall before Mem saw me, but my heart was raging. Three months had passed since this form was signed, yet she had never once mentioned it, never bothered to complete it. Certainly she had never cared to submit it to the embassy, even though it already had been approved!
I did not know what to think, or do. I tried to put the matter out of my head as I worked through my lessons at school that day, as I slid past the librarian’s kindly eyes to my reading corner during lunch. Of course, I could neither read nor work nor put those papers out of my mind. Mem could take me to America now. In America I would be safe. No one from my past life could reach me there. But Mem did not want me in America. Most likely, she did not want me at all.
After school I borrowed the last ten rupees from Nagu, saying it was for a present for Mem. I rode my bicycle to Humayun’s Tomb and found Jaggu whittling a shaft of wood with his long, foldout knife. I gave him the envelope of money, the agreed amount, and he grinned at me, flicking the knife closed. He was relieved. I could see it in his eyes. He was almost as frightened of Indrani’s friends as I was.
But now my savings were gone, and I could no longer even fantasize about turning to Mem. If I kept stealing to pay my debts, she was certain to find out, and then she would surely toss me away. I would have no choice but to return to Indrani.
As I rode home I thought back to the girls I had met at the roundabout two years earlier. Everything I told Jaggu was true. I could earn plenty if I stood with the night birds, especially dressed in foreign clothing and speaking with an educated accent. Mem would never have to know. And if I succeeded, I could stay in school, continue living among the firenghi. I was smart, and I worked hard. All my teachers said so. This other business would not change that. One day, I might go to America on my own.
So it was decided. I would tell no one.
I was surprised to discover how much of my training from the flash house remained within me. Although I thought I had put them out of my mind, I now recalled with exquisite clarity the ways and wiles of my sisters, and the tricks they used to please their babus. I remembered the pretended abandon with which they smoked and drank, the languor with which each operated her body like an instrument that was an extension of herself and yet not herself. I remembered Bharati telling me that a woman’s flesh, whether sacred or evil, will dictate her survival, and I returned ove
r and over in my mind to the monument of the angrezi, those painted girls jingling their glass bangles and scenting the air with rosewater and jasmine. How they had soothed me with their attentions, the easy inclusiveness of their smiles. I had ignored the chill of misgiving that swept among them at the mention of Mrs. Shaw. I left them for the illusion of rescue. Now I understood.
From watching my sisters, and especially from the true smiles I used to exchange with Mira, I knew that the girl who went forth that first night must be other than myself. Oh, she would possess and use my body, but she and I truly would never touch, or even look alike. So it was for this shadow that I lifted from Mem’s closet the red evening dress in which I had once “dressed up” as Princess Kamla of Kashgaria. It was for this make-believe Princess’s disguise that I stole from Mem’s dressing table her rejected pots of rouge and kohl sticks. For this harlot’s protection that I wheedled a key and the use of his gardening box out of the mali, Musai. That night as I lay in bed waiting to be sure of Simon’s heavy sleep breathing and double-checked the setting of the watch Lawrence had given me for my invented birthday, I decided to allow my shadow three hours, no more.
The vine that twisted upward to the terrace outside our bedroom was every bit as handy as the damsel’s braid in the foreign fairy tale of Rapunzel that Mem once read to us, yet still, as I watched Princess Kamla—no, I decided, only Princess… Even as I watched this Princess, then, gingerly finding her footing among the trunk’s tangles, as my mind’s eye watched the pale swirl of her nightgown drifting to the ground, the ghost of her body stepping and wriggling into its darker skin, her head dipping as she twisted her hair and handled her face, I wondered at her confidence and stealth. The Princess was an escape artist.
The sky loomed powdery black that night, cold and filled with stars, though it smelled, as always, of dung fire. Occasionally, between the black branches of the plane trees above the compound walls, the moon would appear as a chalky smudge. Jackals screamed across the wild lands. And from the dark sprawls of tenement encampments tucked under bridges or behind ancient tombs rose the moans of the sick and dying. A few bicycles and rickshaws passed, one or two automobiles with their lights out. It took only about five minutes to ride by bicycle to the statue, that pale thumb of stone with features of a British hero—which one did not matter. A match flared, illuminating kohl-rimmed eyes, a lipsticked mouth. Flash and fade. The smoldering glow of the cigarette became one of several that hung in the black air like fireflies.
I gathered my skirt to step up onto the high curb. “Hey, sister!” The women laughed and reached a hand to help.
A covered cycle rickshaw entered the roundabout. Its lamp went on, and the hard yellow beam caught the girls in poses that made me think of the calendar Simon’s friend Brian loaned him. I had caught Simon looking at it only a month ago, and he had sworn me to secrecy, then shown me every page. As I studied the displays of legs and breasts, the thick pouting lips and eyelids darkened with collyrium, I had felt my own face and body lift in inward imitation. “Mem would kill us if she found out,” I said, confused by the mixture of dread and desire the images aroused in me.
“Why?” Simon replied, though I sensed he was mouthing his friend’s words. “It’s just harmless fun.”
I had neither the courage nor the heart to tell him the truth.
The girls in the roundabout tipped their heads and bared arms and legs. They clattered glass bangles and floated vermilion fingernails, outlining the curves of their bosoms and hips. Some wore golden threaded saris with nothing underneath. Some wore skintight turquoise and green choli bodices lifted to expose charcoal crescents circumscribing their breasts. As the headlamp slowly circled, it seemed to snatch each woman in turn and cast her back into darkness. Then suddenly, as the rickshaw came around again, the flood beam fell on a tall girl with blue-rimmed eyes who pulled her red sari across her mouth and did a little dance with her hips. The oilcloth flap to the cab pulled back, and the vehicle stopped. She stepped closer to negotiate a price. The flap opened wider and she climbed inside. The lamp flickered off again, and the rickshaw slipped back into the darkness.
“Will she return tonight?” I asked a girl whose pockmarked skin had reminded me of orange peel in the headlights.
“Most likely, she will return in an hour. The hotel is not far.”
“Hotel?”
The voice of another, scratchy as a thornbush, called out, “Yes, child, a grand hotel, with English beds and uniformed waiters and gramophones and punkahs flapping. Just you wait!” A wave of laughter rolled across the darkness, and someone plucked at my arm to move me back as a motorcar approached. But I stepped forward and posed like the rest. The car was a handsome black Morris touring sedan that smacked of money, and I did not intend to wait.
The sedan slowed to a stop in front of me. The pockmarked girl gave me a shove. “Beginner’s luck,” she said.
The passenger door opened. I hesitated. “Beginner’s luck,” the girl repeated. “Go on, or I will.”
The sedan held one man only who drove himself and offered an hour’s price for half that time. “I know him,” one of the sisters assured me. “He is interested because you are new. Go along, he’s all right.” All I could see in the darkness was the size of him, which was puffed and stubby. I climbed in, and the car rolled away.
He smelled of hair pomade and a dinner steeped in garlic and curry. He asked for a name, and I told him, Princess. He did not offer his own. After that we drove in silence, turning only minutes later between two sandstone pillars topped by carved lions. I looked across the lawn and realized we had come to the Jai Mahal hotel. But this was not the entrance Mem and Lawrence used when they brought me and Simon to swim. Here no guards stood sentry, nor was there a single light in the large flat car park where we stopped. The hotel building, with its side verandas and hundreds of windows, twinkled just a few hundred feet away, but here the leaves of the trees formed a separate canopy, and as the man beside me clicked off the engine and dropped his hand to my knee I understood that the hotel might as well stand in another country.
There were perhaps half a dozen cars parked around us, identifiable only through the shimmer of their chrome, the occasional flicker of a match, the rocking of metal springs, or the explosion of a groan. Every so often a waiter would appear on the ground-lit path from the hotel kitchen holding a tray of bottles and glasses.
I remember these things as if I, too, were invisible. As if I were the Princess’s shadow instead of the other way around. Other things I do not choose to remember at all.
Chapter 13
1
LAWRENCE REACHED WISCONSIN IN early February after flying in fits and starts for five days from Sydney. He had never been to America’s Midwest before, and as he climbed from the taxicab on Milwaukee ’s north shore the cold literally took his breath away. Factoring in the effects of the chilling wind, the temperature plunged to twenty below zero. His wool overcoat, sweater, and thin leather gloves had been up to the job in San Francisco. Here, they might have been tissue paper.
“Better get yourself a hat,” the driver advised him. “Heat rises, y’ know.” Then he tipped his own red beret and drove off, leaving Lawrence bareheaded, teeth chattering, loath to breathe for fear his windpipe would freeze. The sky was like slate, the trees barren, and Lake Michigan, which he could see through tears of pain if he faced into the wind, looked like a vast plate of whipped ink. Who but Americans would consider this a livable climate?
Turning from the waterfront, he pulled a notepad out of his pocket to make sure the address he’d written down matched the tarnished brass numbers on the brick pillar in front of him. The house, an imposing if careworn Tudor, was fronted by an apron of brown lawn laced with snow and presided over by a too bright and shiny platoon of grinning ceramic trolls. Faded floral curtains hung in the windows. A late-model dark green Ford sat under the carport. Lawrence shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and stamped his feet up the wide veranda.
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A dog yipped inside. “Hush, Lily!” A woman’s voice, fat and stern.
As the door opened, Lawrence saw the owner of the voice bent over, holding a squirming tan dachshund by the collar. She was thick-waisted, approaching middle age, with bobbed hair the same color as the dog’s.
“Come in! Come in!” she ordered Lawrence before he had a chance to introduce himself. “You’ll catch your death out there.” She pushed the door shut with one sensibly shod foot. “Excuse me, I’ll just get this little pest out of our way. Go on into the living room, will you?”
She vanished down the dark center hallway, leaving Lawrence to seat himself on one of the overstuffed couches in the parlor off the entry. Between the fire in the grate and the radiator hissing in the corner it was almost as hot inside as it was cold out. He quickly shed his coat and gloves and blew his nose. An array of framed photographs lined the mantelpiece and bookshelves, but before he could examine them the woman was back, tugging on a maroon cardigan over her pastel green housedress and wheezing lightly.
“Mr. Malcolm!”
“Mrs. Darling?”
Her round face squeezed into a smile. “It always sounds so silly when someone new says it. And in that nice accent, too.” She offered her hand. It was like shaking a lump of bread dough. “Just call me Grace.”
“Lawrence,” he returned.
“Would you like some coffee? Mother’ll be down in a minute. She was just getting some things together for you.”
He had called from San Francisco. They knew who he was. Eldon had told them. Lawrence said he would like to pay his respects. Of course. They understood.