Imaginary Men

by Anjali Banerjee

  “What do you want to know?” Raja opens his hands toward me. “My business is called Granite Point. I have many associates who manage the details. We export, wholesale, and retail Indian marble, slate, and granite. We offer many designs and types of products—”

  “Acha, Raja,” Neelu says. “Lina couldn’t possibly be interested—”

  “I’m fascinated.”

  “Raja tells me you’re quite accomplished in your field. Matchmaking is a difficult endeavor.”

  I glance sidelong at Raja. He doesn’t blink. “I—haven’t been too good at it lately.”

  “Raja says you’re the best.”

  “What about you? Raja says you’re quite accomplished,” I say.

  “Hah, I taught physics in college for several years, but I’ve recently retired. You live an independent life in San Francisco. How I should love to visit.”

  “Then you should.” I want to tell her she can have my apartment, sleep in my bed, and I’ll cook Indian food for her, even though my cooking sucks.

  “I should love that.” She smiles warmly.

  Then I see the kitten, now a big, furry cat, curled up on a settee in the corner. The cat Raja rescued.

  I smile, and we talk for a long time, until the tea is cold and the pot nearly empty. I learn about Raja’s mishaps as a child, the time a cobra nearly bit him, the night he sleepwalked and nearly drowned in the sea. I learn of his first girlfriend, a British girl visiting from London with her nanny.

  “I caught them kissing in the bathroom,” Mrs. Prasad says, and Raja’s face reddens. I’ve never seen him blush.

  As the sun dips toward the horizon, a red glow seeps across the sky.

  “Go on for a walk,” Neelu says, getting up. “I’m off to find the cook.”

  I stand, my legs stiff. My heartbeat picks up at the prospect of walking on the beach with Raja again. Will he drag me into the surf? He takes my hand and leads me down the marble steps to the beach. We walk barefoot next to the shoreline. After the crowds of Kolkata, the deserted stretch of white sand calms my nerves, and for a few moments I forget that this man still might choose the princess. A thick, salty breeze rolls in from the sea.

  “You never told me how you got the scar on your cheek,” I say. “I’ve been picturing a battle or sword fight—”

  Raja laughs. “You’re a woman of imagination. In reality, the story is much more mundane. I was a child playing crocodile with Dev. We would jump from bed to bed to avoid the ‘crocodiles’ lurking on the floor. I missed the mattress and hit my face on the bedpost instead. My mother was beside herself. The wound required six stitches.”

  “I bet you didn’t cry.” I grin at him.

  “I bawled like a baby, despite my mother’s attempts to comfort me.” He walks close, still holding my hand.

  “She’s not what I expected. I thought she’d be bossy and loud, like Auntie.”

  “My mother doesn’t push,” he says.

  “She has an inner glow, a kind of peace.”

  “So do you, at times.” Raja squeezes my fingers. “I wish you could feel at home here, Lina, but I see the ambivalence in your eyes. In this global world, people e-mail each other across great distances, and yet we’re still light-years apart.”

  “I can’t help who I am, Raja. I grew up in the States. I watched Sesame Street and played with Lite Brite and SpiroTot. We didn’t celebrate all the Indian festivals. We had Santa Claus and Thanksgiving and Christmas trees with ornaments.”

  “I’d like to learn about Thanksgiving—what is it? You slaughter large chickens, is it?”

  “Turkeys. I don’t eat them, but many people do. Still, I like the holiday. It’s one of the few days without traffic, when most of the stores are closed and people visit family and stuff their faces with food, and then everyone complains that they’ve gained too much weight and they go on whirlwind diets that don’t work.”

  “Acha—you know your country, as I know mine. My father ran Granite Point for several years. The business faltered, but now it’s doing well. And the orphanages need me. There’s still much work to be done. I’m loath to leave my projects.”

  “I’d never want you to leave your projects,” I say. “Your roots are here.”

  “And so are yours.”

  “My roots may be here, but my home is there.” I point west across the distance.

  Sunset spreads over the sand, bathing Puri in a rose-tinted glow. If only we could remain here, suspended in twilight.

  Raja stops and takes my face in his hands, forcing me to gaze up into his eyes. The unspoken words Princess Sayantoni hover between us. The princess understands Raja’s culture. With her, he would never have to travel; never have to forsake his home.

  How can this faint silver filament, the spectral thread reaching from my heart to his, ever bridge the continents between us?

  Thirty-five

  I’m sitting at my computer in a bedroom so big and desolate it could be a foreign country. Since I returned to San Francisco, the fog hasn’t lifted. Morning mist slithers through the city, flicking its tongue into every corner, breathing through windows. In my sleep, the haze hypnotizes me, lulls me into complacency. Americans don’t worry about frequent power cuts or whether leftovers will rot in the fridge. We don’t thank the shower for producing clean water with the proper pressure. After two weeks in India, I do. I worship water. I immerse myself in bubble baths until my toes shrivel into prunes.

  I’m writing Raja an e-mail to thank him for paying my way to India, for taking care of me in Puri. I extend my warmest gratitude to his mother. Her mild rice and dahl nourished me through illness. I hope the arthritis is better in her thumbs. I’ll never again take opposable thumbs for granted.

  When I threw up for two days, Raja held a cool compress to my forehead, brought me lime-flavored Electral, an electrolyte drink, to restore my strength. I still smell his spicy cologne, hear his comforting, steady voice. He read to me from the Ramayana, the epic story of Rama and his great love, Sita. When the ten-headed demon, Ravana, kidnapped Sita, Rama amassed an army to rescue her.

  Now I understand what Raja’s life means to him in India. Here, life is television. Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order. The flickering tube can all too easily suck us into its virtual world. I came home and I was startled by a sense of emptiness, although traffic chokes the highways. Even in the city, there’s a sense of isolation. We don’t understand population density the way Kolkatans understand it.

  Here, there’s room for everyone, and no resource will ever run out. That’s what we think, anyway, and I wonder if we take too much for granted as we pop hairspray and DVDs into metal carts and stand in line at the checkout.

  What struck me most, upon returning this time, was the layer of flesh between skin and bone, giving Americans the appearance of smooth jointlessness. I remembered, with a sharp ache, the sinew and flat, lean muscle on every rickshaw-wallah, roadside vendor, and servant in India. What a demarcation between rich and poor.

  The day Raja and I returned to Kolkata, we took an auto-rickshaw through the streets, and I had no idea where we were going. We stopped to witness a demonstration. Factory workers were on strike. They sat cross-legged in the dirt, chanting, waving their arms, but I couldn’t understand the language. Silly me.

  We moved on and presently arrived at the Save the Children orphanage. I didn’t know Raja was funding the house renovations. My heart lifted when I smelled fresh paint in two of the rooms. My small donations to charities paled in comparison. What had I been doing with my life? The girls laughed, fresh in their clean dresses, some in white-and-blue uniforms. Anchala, a tribal girl, trotted up and took my hand. Her fingers were warm. She spoke broken English, asked about my Liz Claiborne jeans. I wanted to take them off and give them to her. She was missing a front tooth, and I thought, the tooth fairy won’t leave a quarter under her pillow, so I gave her a quarter, and she just looked at it and smiled. The silver glinted in the sun. For her, the q
uarter was nature’s artifact, like a shining rock one might find on the beach. She wasn’t thinking of what she could buy—bubble gum or jellybeans. While Raja went inside to talk to the director, Anchala and the girls and I played in the courtyard, surrounded by a crumbling red brick wall. The climbing clematis lent wildness to the garden, and I thought if I found a loose brick in the wall, I could open a door to a better world. I would transport the girls, and for those who’d been abandoned simply because they were girls, I would grant a new set of loving parents.

  There’s still so much to fix. A new pathway from the road to the orphanage, from the back way, needs to be constructed. The ponds need embankments. The children’s rooms need renovations. Now I know why Raja wanted a woman who could care for his family. What he really wanted was a woman who could help him care for the lost and forgotten.

  I say all this in my e-mail, in the hope that Raja will see another side of me, too. I sign the letter, Love, Lina and send it off into cyberspace.

  In the evening, there’s a message from Raja:

  Dearest Lina,

  Thank you for your kind letter. I hope this finds you well. I must apologize for not replying sooner. I’ve been in Mumbai soliciting funds for a new school for girls in Karagpur. The home in Thakurpukur will receive state support, for which I am grateful. I also paid a visit to the local bustee welfare center. We’re planning a few new vocational training projects.

  I’m home now and enjoying some respite with Ma. She read your letter with eagerness. Her thumbs have improved. She can’t stop speaking of you. Somehow, you managed to enchant the girls at Save the Children. Their lives have been rough, with so few reasons for joy, and you made them happy.

  Anchala took a special liking to you. She draws pictures of you, and I suspect you’re her surrogate mother. Ma has explained several times that you live in America, but Anchala does not yet understand these vast distances. Either you live next door, or you live on Pluto. I told her America is much closer to Pluto, and her face fell.

  I’ve thought often of you since you left, and I must confess, I dream of you often.

  Raja

  I close the e-mail with a sharp sense of loss. Twilight whispers pink across the horizon, and I find myself missing daylight. I dream of you. If only these fantasies, these imaginings fashioned from stardust and longing—if only these dreams could come true.

  Thirty-six

  San Francisco is clear today. Along the western horizon, the waterline cuts the sky. I taste the cold, clean air on my way to work, and my mind is sharp when Mr. Sen arrives for his appointment at ten o’clock.

  “Would you like some tea?” I ask.

  “You’ve never offered.” He sits, looking flustered.

  “I know, and I apologize. We have Earl Grey, Breakfast Blend, Darjeeling—”

  “Darjeeling, thank you!”

  After I bring him tea, we talk about his plans.

  “America is a vast land of opportunity, but you drive for miles and never meet a soul,” he says. “I have no family here, no prospects for marriage.”

  I rest my elbows on the desk, my chin in my hands. “I know what it feels like to be alone. I know what it’s like to be confused, to … feel the need to live up to someone else’s expectations.”

  Mr. Sen leans back, as if my words were a blast of wind. We’re both silent for a time.

  “My parents expected me to make something of myself here,” he says finally. “To pursue the American dream and send money home, and most of all, they expected me to bring home a wife.”

  “You have made something of yourself here. I’m sure your parents are proud.” I still taste the sea air in Puri, still hear Raja’s mother talking in her soft voice. Restlessness pulls at my insides.

  The corners of his mouth turn down. “I’m beginning to love Starbucks, nah? And the Fisherman’s Wharf. I have dinner at Gaylord’s India Restaurant once a week, and I know the chef. I want to stay in America, but now my parents want me to return to India.”

  “Maybe we can keep trying. Give me another chance. That’s why I called you here today. I won’t charge you.”

  “No, I can’t allow you to work for nothing.”

  “I want to help—”

  “You’ve done all you can do. Please.”

  “Are you sure? I—”

  “Don’t fret. All will work itself out.”

  We stand and shake hands. He has a firm grip, surprising for such a slight man, but then, I’m no longer so easily surprised.

  My heart heavy, I walk him out to the waiting room, where Mrs. Mukerjee paces with her usual impatience, her daughter sitting on the couch, her nose in People Magazine . She wears an invisible bubble around her.

  As Mr. Sen walks by, I see it.

  “Stop!” I shout.

  He rests his hand on the doorknob. He turns around, startled.

  “Wait, you forgot something.” I rush to put myself between him and the door.

  “What? I’ve got my hat, my wallet—”

  “Just a minute.” I yank Sonya to her feet. The silvery filament extends from her chest to Mr. Sen’s chest—well, actually, it catches on the hem of her sari and hangs there, the thread slackening as I pull her closer to him.

  “Mr. Sen, I’d like you to meet Miss Sonya Mukerjee.” I join their hands, and the colors fuse in an aura of light. Sonya looks up at him, and their gazes lock, and we’re tumbling through a romantic movie. Roses bloom in time-lapse photography, and clouds race across the sky as Mr. Sen and Miss Mukerjee exchange the usual pleasantries—lovely to meet you, How are you. Their minds and bodies are already leaning into the future.

  Mrs. Mukerjee’s face puckers. I take her by the elbow and swing her into my office.

  “Mr. Sen comes from a good family, much money, very smart, Brahmin, very nice and caring,” I say quickly, and I keep talking, all my skills back again, and as I talk, Mrs. Mukerjee relaxes.

  “I always thought he would make a good husband,” she says. “He’s always leaving when we’re coming in, and I’m looking at him and thinking, Now, that man may be the right man for my daughter.”

  I give her the credit. “Yes, you made a good match.”

  “Of course, you may keep the money. After all, they met here.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  After they leave, chattering, the glow still coming at me under the door, I go into Donna’s office.

  She looks up. “He called.”

  My heart leaps. “And?”

  I sit across from her, take in the curved lines of her face, the porcelain tone of her skin, the papers on her desk, the scent of floral perfume, the little Beanie Babies lined up next to her computer, the pictures of her son and Dev. She and Dev are engaged, and he plans to stay on in the States. These anchors keep her here, give her life meaning.

  She reads the question in my expression. “Raja wants to talk to you. He has news. He thought it best to let you know.”

  “Let me know what?”

  She shrugs, sadness in her eyes. “He didn’t say. He’ll call you at home tonight.”

  I know what Raja will say. He and the princess have set a wedding date. I go home to wait.

  Thirty-seven

  The call comes through a little after nine. The line is unnaturally clear, as if Raja’s breathing into my ear. I imagine he has just woken up to a cool morning by the sea.

  “I need to tell you something,” he says. “I want you to keep everything you hold dear. Your job, your friends, your family.”

  He’s preparing me for the inevitable news of his engagement to Princess Sayantoni. “Thank you, Raja. I wish the same for you.”

  “I’ve made my choice.”

  “What choice?” I whisper, although I already know the answer.

  “I did some soul-searching in Puri, after you left, and … I’m applying for another visa.”

  “You what?” Time slows again, the wall clock ticking away the hour in long seconds.

  “I�
�m coming to America. I need to get to know you better. I need a lover, a best friend. Perhaps a wife, but we’ll see.”

  The room tilts, his words rushing at me. “Raja—”

  “Don’t speak.” I imagine him putting a finger to my lips. I watch the angle of light coming in through the window, the smells, the sounds of my city. I love San Francisco. I love my family. I love my friends. Raja loves all the same things in India, but he’s willing to give up everything he holds dear to be with me. I imagine I’m right next to him, feeling his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin, the solid silver thread shimmering between us.

  Thirty-eight

  I’m on the afternoon train leaving Kolkata’s Howrah Station. I’m not sure where this journey will end. I try to read the Statesman newspaper, but it’s hard to concentrate.

  Finally, the steam train hisses and groans away from the station, and my heart sings with anticipation. I hold Star Galaxy in my hand for good luck. My home remains in San Francisco, but I’m widening my net, as Harry would say. When I was born, Pandit Parsai predicted I’d search for love across many seas. He was right.

  I unfold the glossy India brochure. On this trip, I’ll visit the Taj Mahal and sink my toes into the hot, white sands of Goa. First, I’ll meet Raja in Puri, then attend the opening ceremony of his new school for girls in Karagpur. Anchala will be there. She’ll grow up and become someone, and maybe one day she’ll travel to San Francisco.

  I close my eyes and picture the city, Coit Tower rising into the clouds. My mind races out to Marin County, Mendocino, Point Reyes National Seashore, gray whales spouting in the distant sea.

  Later, as the sky darkens, the train coasts to a stop. I step onto the platform. The crowds move in, and then a tall man strides toward me. There’s a hush, as if the earth has fallen into silence as Raja embraces me.