As Sweet as Honey

by Indira Ganesan

“This is to strengthen your blood. Come see me next week.”

  Meterling said goodbye to both the doctor and the woman in the sari.

  Together, with Oscar in the Snugli that her mother-in-law got them, the brown pills in her purse, she boarded a bus to buy sweaters at Marks & Spencer for the rest of the family, and then, with all their purchases, took a taxi home.

  37

  Simon ate crisps out of a packet at the kitchen table, looking at the paper. She put down her packages, transferred Oscar, who was already asleep, to his cot, and returned to the kitchen. Sighing, she slid into a seat and hungrily ate the crisps Simon offered. She liked to douse hers with hot sauce, which Simon complained made them soggy. But Meterling liked her snacks hot. For now, though, she would stay away from spicy foods. Archer appeared almost casually, reading over Simon’s shoulder. Salt. She had forgotten about salt.

  She fled to the bedroom.

  “Meterling, what’s wrong?”

  But Meterling cried harder into her pillow, her skin damp, her wild, unmanageable hair sticking to forehead and pillows.

  “Please, let me in, tell me what’s wrong.”

  For a moment, Meterling lifted her head, but she could see him beyond Simon, smiling. With some force, she embraced Simon, kissing him, thinking that if she were to make love passionately to Simon, Archer would have no choice but to go. “Forgive me, Simon,” she said silently, undressing quickly.

  “I don’t understand you,” said Simon, later, buttoning up. “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “I went to see an Ayurvedic doctor.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I can see him, Simon.”

  “Who, for godsakes?”

  “Archer. I can see him. He is always there.”

  “Archer.”

  “I know you must think—but I’m not imagining things.”

  “I’ve seen him, too.”

  Meterling stared at Simon.

  “At first, I thought I was dreaming, but there he was, opposite me on the train.”

  “And then you realized it was someone else.”

  “No, it was Archer. I thought he’d tell me something, bless our marriage, get angry, anything.”

  “You were on a train.”

  “Even when I got out at the station.”

  “What was he wearing, Simon?”

  “The white suit he had on at the wedding, with the pink tie.”

  “Do you think Oscar sees him?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only seen him that once. My scalp started itching.”

  “My toes tingle before he appears. It’s eerie.”

  “My great-grandfather on my mother’s side saw ghosts. He claimed several lived in his house. He said that they were friendly. When I was six, I once visited him with Archer and Susan. He was dying then. He asked me to come close to him. I went near, thinking he’d tell me about them, give me a secret, but all he did was tweak my ear.”

  Simon rubbed his ear as if it hurt still.

  “Archer, Susan, and I combed his house, but we never saw the ghosts.”

  “He wants me to live on Pi and eat mangoes.”

  “Archer?”

  “Simon, maybe I should invite him to the dinner party, but the doctor said not to interact with him.”

  “I don’t think he needs an invitation.”

  “I think he wants Oscar.”

  “Well, he can’t have him.”

  Meterling wiped her eyes. “Mrs. Vickers might leave us if she sees Archer’s ghost.”

  “Mrs. Vickers hasn’t seen him.”

  “Am I being rude, Simon? He left me the house and the fields. Maybe he’s lonely, maybe he just wants company.”

  “His inheritance actually brought us together, Meti. Don’t feel guilty about that. The expected hardship for an heir is the estate tax, not the ghost of the deceased.”

  “Maybe we ought to sell everything.”

  The next day, Meterling woke rested. She threw back the covers, upsetting Pibs, who had nestled by her ear. It was Diwali and she had not had a nightmare. Maybe Archer’s ghost had decided to go away at last. The pale sun lit up the curtains. Her first Diwali with her husband—a tremendous thing. A buffet was the perfect choice. That would be easy. Simon started to laugh, but agreed to help. Mostly that meant chopping vegetables and then staying out of the kitchen. By the time all four burners were on, he decided to take Oscar out, “to get from under your feet.”

  Having made his escape, my uncle Simon wrapped his scarf closer around his neck, and made sure Oscar was sufficiently bundled but not suffocating. Navigating the buggy, and listening to Oscar’s delighted squeals, he remembered how worried he was that he might accidentally drop the baby. Or go to a supermarket and forget him in the car. He had never once dropped him or forgotten him, but the thought plagued him in the rare nightmare. He would then get up and make sure Oscar was breathing.

  He missed Archer. The shock had hit him with such force. Archer had been his older brother, the genial advisor. His parents let him do anything if Archer was around, even if they recognized that the latter was more often co-conspirator than chaperone. Archer would keep Simon safe. Archer did keep him safe. It was Archer who introduced him to the first taste of the family gin, and bought him his first packet of condoms. It was Archer who insisted that Simon keep up his studies, who let him use his flat in London later as a place to crash. Archer’s flat overlooked the Thames, and when Simon brought his first girlfriends there, they could hear the water lap as they clumsily unwrapped themselves and learned to make love.

  It was Archer who pressed upon him The Tao of Sex and Henry Miller and On the Road. Those books and others occupied the shelves and the floors of Simon’s first flat after matriculation. Degree in hand, he wound up not at the great financial houses like his peers, or the courts, but as an intern for Roman Books, a small publisher of volumes about Italy. A Hundred Ways to Look at Spaghetti and Love in Tuscany with a Picnic Hamper all found themselves between hard covers, and Simon’s job was to read through assorted manuscripts, fetch coffee, make coffee, answer phones, and open mail. Soon, he began to write rejection letters: We are so sorry to have to return your manuscript. It is just not what we are looking for now. Then back would go the proposal into an envelope helpfully provided with the submission. In a year, he became an assistant editor, and in two, an editor. In three years, he found another house, one that published travel exploits, trekking guides, and garden books. He began and ended affairs with (or was left by) two women he worked alongside: a girl in marketing straight from university, and an assistant who began to arch her eyebrows at him when they passed each other, as if they were sharing a secret joke. The joke was their brief cohabitation; the joke was he never fully satisfied her. So here were her eyebrows, raised upwards, and her eyes widening in their sockets, in the hallways, in the tiny coffee area, expecting his to respond in kind. She left to work at Faber or Penguin or Bloomsbury, and the university student immigrated to the States.

  A series of casual hookups followed, but nothing amounted to much. He resolved to become a bachelor, set in his ways, attached to fuzzy slippers on the weekends and dinners at the pub round the corner. He wondered if he could learn to love a pipe as his father did, and spent time in tobacco shops, looking at displays of wood-grained ware. Tobacconists were solid places, he thought, with a hushed quiet, while their proprietors stayed back, only letting out a discreet cough to indicate their presence. In addition to pipes, one could find miniature chess sets, backgammon boards, and fine colognes (their names evoking another era with words like Bay Rum, Lord’s Favourite No 10, Truefitt & Hill), as well as soft leather pouches, tortoiseshell mustache combs, and, of course, an ample selection of cigarettes and cigars. In the end, he decided he wasn’t a pipe smoker, though he still liked to stop in the shops for a heady whiff.

  Archer wanted him to visit Madhupur, set up a publishing company with island bookbinders. Instead, Simon stayed on in pub
lishing in London for ten years, until he’d had enough and walked away. Now was the time to write his book. He would freelance for local newspapers, but that too became steady. He became “Simon Digs Up,” the roving horticulturalist, with a weekly nine-hundred-word column. Susan took him out to lunch his first-year anniversary on the job. She ordered champagne and told him that Archer sounded almost bubbly in his letters.

  “Bubbly?”

  “Happy. As if he’s taking stock of his life and likes what he sees.”

  “And that’s cause for alarm?”

  “It is, when he is living halfway around the world and has no intention of returning home.”

  “Let him be, Susan. Doesn’t Archer deserve happiness? And can’t you visit to see him?”

  “Pi? I don’t ever want to go to Pi.”

  A month later came the wedding invitation, printed on saffron and red paper, most of it in Sanskrit. Sowbhaghyavati Meterling Marries Shri Archer. Blessings, blessings, and more blessings.

  Looking at Oscar, he could see Archer’s dimples. He had stopped in front of a tobacconist’s. His mother said the baby looked exactly like Archer, but his father said he looked like Simon. Simon’s heart had opened to Oscar upon his birth; if he analyzed it, it was a combination of grief and joy and a tenderness he didn’t know he could feel toward a baby. He wanted to protect him, protect Meterling. Was he being macho? Male pride blustering up ineptly and uselessly, for how could he protect him from accidents, falls, a world that spoke its frustrations with bombs and violence? Just the other day, there was a bomb scare at Waterloo Station. Just like that, he had transformed from a carefree vegetarian in London to a concerned father and husband.

  A stylish woman stooped to peer at Oscar, and then at Simon.

  “Simon?”

  “Estelle.”

  “Where have you been all this time? Did you—is this your son?”

  “Yes, he is, actually. I’ve become a dad,” adding hastily, “and a husband.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful news! And so brave of you.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Really brave of you, Simon.”

  “So, um, this is my son, Oscar.”

  “He’s adorable, that’s why I stopped in the first place. Which hospital?”

  “Oh, he was born on an island in the Indian Ocean,” he said, retrieving the toy that had fallen on the pavement.

  “Didn’t your cousin—oh, I’m so sorry, I heard.”

  “Well,” said Simon, without thinking about it, “this is actually Archer’s son.” Damn. Why had he said that?

  “Oh, you and your wife adopted his son, that’s—”

  “No—I mean yes, but he’s actually her son.”

  “But I don’t understand—how can …?”

  “Oh, it’s complicated.”

  “You’re married to your cousin’s wife, I see—I think it’s—”

  “I know, brave of me.”

  “Noble, really. No—really. Practically medieval, if you think about it.”

  She laughed—out of embarrassment, Simon hoped.

  “Well …”

  “Yes …”

  “So good …”

  “Absolutely.”

  Damn Estelle. And why did he ever feel the need to say this was Archer’s son? Now, the whole damn publishing industry would know. Well, so what if they knew? He had fallen in love with his late cousin’s wife. He adopted Oscar. It was simple. God, wasn’t it Estelle who used to tease him at Berkham’s with “Simple Simon,” how did it go? The rhyme would enter his brain like a worm all day, he thought, and he wouldn’t remember the words.

  “Oscar, what do you say we go get a slice of pie?”

  They went to American Pudding, a well-lit café, and found a table. This was where many mothers and fathers came with their children, and the babble was loud. Then again, everything was loud in London, the buzz of a world city.

  From his rucksack, Simon fished out a bottle of breast milk. Oscar was only semi-interested. A few more months and they could start solid foods. He met his pie with relish. Nearby, a six-year-old boy was squabbling with his sister over chocolate while their mother sat wearily in front of her tea.

  “You took big bites and Mummy said we were to share.”

  “She didn’t say anything about the size of our bites.”

  “Mummy!”

  Their mother had laid her head down on the table.

  At another table, a kind of fathers’ group converged with assorted youngsters in nappies whose voices competed with one another.

  “If I were back at work, I couldn’t afford the time—”

  “I know what you mean. Here she’s getting promoted, and I’m left at home all day.”

  “But who can afford the child care if we do get back to work? For godsake, Timothy, give the train to Jonathan!”

  Oscar was now sucking his bottle with more interest. A dinner party. Simon had nearly forgotten.

  That morning, he had risen early with Oscar, to find Meterling already up. She heated sesame oil in a small pan and, pouring it into a tiny bowl, handed it to him for the Diwali oil bath.

  “You could come in with us,” he’d suggested.

  “Not with the baby. My grandmother would faint.”

  “We won’t tell her.”

  But Meterling shook her head no, and so together, they bathed Oscar in the sink, massaging the oil into his skin so he gleamed.

  “Look, he loves this.”

  “A born pasha.”

  Sometimes she felt, Meterling said, she could eat his toes, his plump legs and arms, he was such a dumpling.

  They dressed him in his new striped blue onesie (the kurta was for the party) and tiny fuzzy socks. Simon received a shirt and sweater, while Meterling wore the new sari; she would change into something else while cooking. Oil baths, new clothes, sweets and lights for Diwali, Festival of Lights, to welcome wisdom and common sense in everyone.

  Now Oscar wore a wool baby coat and baby shoes, a baby scarf and hat and mittens. A dumpling.

  “I probably look like one, too, these days, the way your mother cooks,” Simon told his son. “Let’s go and get her flowers.”

  38

  There was an old florist’s off Marylebone High Street, and its bell clanged as Simon and the stroller entered. The woman who ran the place, Birdie Bee, looked like she had decided to remain sixty-five forever. Her silver hair was pulled back, her face refreshed with lipstick, and she wore a smock from whose pockets peered sprigs of something yellow, and green marking tags. She crouched down to greet Oscar with the grace of a woman who had practiced yoga from the very start. Birdie used to sell seashells by the seashore, as she liked to tell people, in a small store in Blackpool. Then she married, moved to Oxford, and learned the city by bike. There was a photograph of a laughing, smiling girl in a tartan tam on a bicycle with a basket in front. After her husband was killed in the war, she came to London with her children to stay at her sister’s, and bought the shop dirt-cheap. She still rode a bicycle, with clips and a helmet and a basket in front.

  In the center of the store, artfully arranged nosegays and bouquets, featuring dried pods and tight rosebuds, were featured on a table. The Westminster Watch described this as the place where the cabinet wives got their arrangements. On the back walls, a profusion of blooms fell from long metal buckets, arranged according to color. Where did one get lilacs this time of year? Yet there they were, cut bunches in water alongside wreaths made of bay leaves and lavender. Roses of every color had their own display, framed by hydrangeas and branches of evergreen.

  “Parrot tulips,” she suggested at once when Simon described what he needed. “Look at these, just perfect for autumn,” gesturing to a row of flame-colored flowers with feathery tips. They were startling, maybe too showy, but it was Diwali, and they resembled lanterns in their way. In fact, Chinese lanterns made sense as well, plus winterberry. Birdie wrapped the flowers in brown paper and string and expertly tucked
the package into the stroller, wishing him a good dinner as an early firecracker burst somewhere nearby.

  Outside, the post-lunch crowd had thickened as shoppers hurried to the butcher’s, the cheese shops, the patisseries. World cities never slept, but they had rhythms, waves controlled by business hours. Two major rush hours, a surge during lunchtime. Other than that, it was open to tourists and the self- or unemployed, who tarried on the sidewalks, waited at the gates for the guards to change or for a glimpse of the prime minister. He waited to cross the street with Oscar; his heart was immense. A year ago, he was miserable, about work, about love, and then the devastation of Archer’s death. Now, he had a marvelous life: a wife, a son. At the palace, the flag was up.

  39

  Meterling kneaded the dough for chapatis and put it under a wet cloth in a bowl: after pinching them into a dozen or so little balls, Simon would roll them out into rounds, or near-rounds, and she would cook each one on a hot griddle. The boiled potatoes had cooled as she was making the dough. She rough-chopped them, and then coated them with a dry rub of turmeric, chili, and salt. Getting out a large pan, she popped black mustard seed in oil, sizzled cumin and asafetida, and threw in the onions Simon had chopped earlier. She added the potatoes, and after things had browned a bit, frozen spinach, and later, tomatoes. She covered the lid; in twenty minutes, she would have a wet curry. How easy it was to cook. In truth, if she did have a passion outside of her passion for Oscar and Simon, it would be cooking. She had met a food demonstrator at Sainsbury’s who cooked kebabs on an electric grill. She wouldn’t mind being a demonstrator—this is the way to make dosa, this is how to make pakoras. She knew there were Indian and Bangladeshi aunties who offered home cooking to students far from home, naan for pickup, curry to go. Why couldn’t she do something like that, after Oscar was ready for a baby minder?

  She would give herself time to dress. Last night, she had taken out a seam in her petticoat, thankful for the efforts of Mr. Wali, her family’s tailor, who always had the foresight to make three sets of stitches in his clothing, knowing his clientele’s need to adjust. She had not lost all of the pregnancy weight, and in London she tucked into more food than was necessary, tucked so it showed on her body. Now, in addition to being tall and brown in London, she was becoming large. She didn’t mind. She rinsed the rice at the sink. Still, the only large women society seemed to accept were pregnant ones; all others were seen as incapable of controlling their urges, lacking discipline. Susan went to the gym six days a week, ate a diet of “twigs and leaves” according to Simon, but she did look smashing (what a word, “smashing,” Meterling thought, smiling, because it was one of Thakur’s favorite words) in her tall boots, slicked-back hair, her artful clothes. Meterling added water, a bay leaf, cumin powder, and lit the gas underneath the stockpot.