by Amrit Chima
“You remind me so much of someone,” Manmohan said quietly. He peeled open a pod and removed a soft, white almond. He gazed at it for a moment, then placed it on his tongue, chewed slowly.
“Bapu,” Darshan said, sitting beside his father, believing that he understood. “We all miss Junker Uncle.”
Manmohan flinched slightly as if he had been wrenched out of a dream. The sun inched its way over the toes of their sneakered feet. The birds continued to chatter, to flit from branch to branch. “Let that girl of yours be,” he said, his voice now gruff, cantankerous. “Whatever intellect you have came from books. It has to start somewhere. Let it begin with her.”
~ ~ ~
Darshan loosened his tie to let the sweaty skin of his neck breathe. The emergency room lights were an angry, white glare. A stack of unfinished paperwork lay on his desk in his office down in the lab. He had rushed away after receiving the panicked call from his mother. He checked his watch. He had found it not long ago, forgotten in a box where he had put it some years before. Manmohan’s watch. Although it no longer worked he pressed it to his ear, listening, waiting.
A gurney finally pushed through from outside, his father so small on the wheeled stretcher, surrounded by the bustling emergency crew, mouth and nose swallowed by an oxygen mask. Jai scurried after, her eyes wide and bloodshot, her chuni dragging on the ground. She had discovered Manmohan facedown on the floor next to his bed, staring paralyzed and helpless at the cream-colored fibers of their carpet, guttural noises coming from the back of his throat as he tried to call for help.
A stroke.
~ ~ ~
It had happened on a Wednesday, or so Darshan thought. He was not entirely certain. Isolating the day gave him a sense of order, calmed his groping, rattled mind. “What would you like to do?” the doctors had asked him, friends of his from the hospital. “There will come a time—soon—when his body will stop and the machines will do all the work for him,” they said. “When that time comes, what would you like us to do?”
“Keep him alive,” Navpreet said when Darshan reported the news to the family. They had gathered in Manmohan and Jai’s living room. It was hot, the day unseasonably warm. A desert-like air smelling of rotting pomegranate filtered through the sliding screen door. “I am a doctor,” she insisted. “There are options. I know the data.”
Livleen stayed silent, focusing her attention outside where the garden sweltered under the sun, where the tree leaves curled inward, desperate for shade.
“Yes, keep him alive,” Mohan agreed. Someone had called him to that meeting, had invited him to participate. He paced, tyrannically shuffling his fat paunch about the room in a show of renewed clout, the eldest able-bodied male. “Bapu would want to stay alive.”
Darshan listened to them mull over the predicament, his attention weakening as he followed Livleen’s gaze toward the garden. What would you like us to do? The doctors would not ask Livleen or Mohan, who had no authority to make such a decision. They had already approached Jai, who had indicated she was incapable of determining the fate of the person who had always directed hers. They would not even ask Navpreet, because although they worked with her, they did not know her well enough despite—or because of—her many spurious attempts to endear herself to them, not taking well to her brusque manner with patients, her inhospitable superiority in matters of medicine. There was only him.
“Sit. Please,” Darshan asked his brother, fatigued, needled by the pacing, by the attempt to assert himself as family head after years of being the deplorable son who had roused so much hostility.
Mohan had gone to the hospital just after the stroke, had entered the room, disturbing the reverent quiet during Darshan’s watch.
Pallid and gray, folding his sunglasses away in his shirt pocket, Mohan tentatively approached the bed. Unable to speak or move, Manmohan was forced to stare up at the ceiling. The room smelled thickly of antiseptic cleaner. Machines hummed and beeped.
“He is weak,” Darshan told his brother. “Do not upset him.”
“Bapu,” Mohan breathed. “Bapu, it is Mohan.”
Manmohan averted his eyes.
“What can I do, Bapu? Please, let me do something.”
The old man whispered faintly. Mohan bent, listening hard, a fragile hope softening his face.
“No,” Manmohan said more audibly. Voice cracked and parched, he again repeated himself. “No.”
Agitated, the old man closed his eyes, moisture brimming at his lash line. Without thinking Darshan placed his warm palm on the crown of his father’s turban-less head to protect the soft, cold skin, feeling somehow responsible.
Mohan had begun to quietly weep, murmuring over and over, “I will do anything. I will do anything,” until Darshan led him out of the room, forcing him to leave.
Looking at his siblings now—at Navpreet fanning herself in the hot room, at Livleen sitting stiffly, sweat at her brow, at Mohan who had stopped pacing to grudgingly lean against the open sliding glass door—Darshan locked eyes with each of them, full of angst.
“I do not want him to suffer pain, or shame,” Jai finally said, standing, closing the discussion. She approached Darshan, placed an affectionate arm around his waist. So short next to him, he found himself pulling her head close to his chest like he often did with Sonya.
From where she sat on the sofa, Navpreet glared at him with outrage.
~ ~ ~
“It’s time,” the physician said across the line as Darshan held the receiver to his ear.
The bedroom was dark. The clock read 2:57. Heart beating, he switched on his night-table lamp.
“We need a decision.”
Reaching out across the mattress for Elizabeth, Darshan placed a hand on her back, glad the ringing had not startled her awake. She stirred slightly, then stilled.
“Nothing,” he said into the phone. “Just let him go.”
~ ~ ~
He strummed his fingers on the ship-hatch table, a relic from the Lion of India now repurposed in his parents’ kitchen, its heavy iron legs settled into indentations in the linoleum. The lacquered surface was scratched, beginning to yellow at the edges where cracks had formed. A bowl of plums sat in the center, the fruit overripe. He palmed one, the skin delicate, the meat beneath tender. Pressing his thumb into the fruit, the skin caved, and a trickle of juice ran down the side of his hand, dripping off his wrist and onto the table. His family wordlessly watched him. Across from him Navpreet frowned, and Taran, next to Livleen, shook his head in disgust.
Elizabeth reached behind her for a spool of paper towels on the counter. She tore off a perforated section, folded it in half and wiped away the juice from both the table and Darshan’s hand. She took the plum from him, used her fingers to tear it in half and pry out the pit. She folded a clean paper towel and put the halves on it, then slid it over to Jai. Absently, Jai lifted a half to her mouth and sucked some of the juice. She wearily dropped the plum back onto the napkin and turned her stony gaze upon Mohan, who was leaning against the refrigerator.
“There is no point to this,” Navpreet said, backing out her chair, threatening to stalk off.
“We will fly his ashes back to Barapind,” Mohan said decisively. “Open a school in his name.”
At this sudden proposal, Navpreet remained seated. Slowly she pulled her chair closer to the table.
Seemingly taken with the idea, Taran deferentially nodded his approval. Livleen, face drawn and sunken from lack of sleep, passively laced her fingers together in her lap.
Jai looked down at the mutilated plum in front of her. “Why?” she asked quietly, her voice flat.
“Because education was important to him,” Mohan replied with a hint of censure.
She tensed, turning to him.
Chastened, he scowled with embarrassment. “He was my father. It is my duty to make this decision.”
With a bleak, unblinking stare, she said evenly, “Darshan will get the ashes. He will make the arrangements.”
>
Navpreet stood abruptly, her wooden chair falling backward, hitting the linoleum with a dull, heavy blow. She glanced around the table, affronted, the grey hairs at the roots close to her temples more visible under the kitchen light. She took a breath, put her hands to her abdomen as if trying to bridle her rage. “I am a doctor,” she said. “I could have saved him. We,” she pointed to Livleen and Mohan, “wanted to save him. We should now at least be allowed to properly voice how best to put him to rest.”
Elizabeth, who understood very little Punjabi, raised her eyebrows at the aggression in Navpreet’s tone.
Darshan sighed, reached for another plum.
Jai clenched her teeth, jaw muscles flexing. She ignored her daughter, who stood for several impatient moments waiting for a response. “Take some apples before you leave,” she told them all, gazing outside the bay window behind the kitchen sink. Fruit from the garden was scattered thickly beneath the trees in the mud, beginning to decay.
~ ~ ~
Dry grit caked the wooden handle of his father’s old trowel. It grated against Darshan’s palm as he tightened his grip, allowing the splinters and grains to dig into his skin. He swung it feebly in front of him, like a sword, then jabbed it into the ground at the base of the almond tree, loosening the soil that was drying without water. Striking the earth eased the beating of his heart, the oppressive quiet of his mind. He jabbed it down again, and again, leaving a number of half moons in the dirt.
The murmured noises of mourners inside the house sounded so remote to him from out here. He turned to peer through the sliding glass door, trying to discern if his brother was still inside, hoping Mohan had gone home already. With a mix of frustration and revulsion, he again stabbed the earth with the trowel, picturing his brother repeatedly accosting the posed form of their dead father with a spritz bottle of perfume. Every few minutes Mohan would rise from the front row to spray the body, interrupting the line of mourners paying their respects before the scheduled cremation. After tucking away the bottle, his brother would then snap his handkerchief in the air before wiping his nose, whispering, “Waheguru, waheguru.”
Darshan shut his eyes, haunted by the alien look of the embalmed body, the combed and net-tucked beard, the dark blue turban, the stretched skin of his father’s cheeks and hands. It disturbed him now to think that he had once cut open bodies, had sutured their organs, had searched within them for diseases and causes of death. Looking into the casket, he had found himself wondering who had examined Manmohan’s organs and what they had discovered. Perhaps the unnatural bend of the old man’s spine had revealed something deeper, something in the ligaments and joints, like the patriarchal pressure he had always applied to his children, the uncertainty and discomfort he had caused them all. Perhaps the unsaid approval that Darshan had always hoped to hear from his father after bearing that pressure were stored away and hidden in the folds of tissue and organs and in the marrow of his bones.
A small ivory comb had rested on his father’s chest, the one Manmohan used to comb his hair before growing bald. In Fiji he had run it through his tangles in the mornings as a matter of routine, flipping his head forward to get to the back strands, biting the comb in his teeth while briskly twisting his hair into a tight bun, finishing by shoving the prongs into his topknot before wrapping his turban. Darshan had watched him, had learned. Mohan, frantic for one small victory, had insisted it be cremated with the body. Grieving, aggravated with the incessant pestering, Jai had permitted it.
Darshan let the trowel fall to the ground and clapped his palms clean. He loosened his arms, allowing them to dangle at his sides. The pull on his shoulders felt good, a reminder of gravity, of the laws of nature. He surveyed the setting sun. The hills beyond the backyard were golden fire.
“Dad?” Sonya said from behind him.
Relieved to see her, he smiled. “Come.”
She stood beside him, their arms touching as the sun deepened in color to an ochreous orange. After a time she gave him a piece of paper.
He unfolded it, read the brief note. “UCLA,” he said without enthusiasm.
“I got it today. A bit of good news.”
“What about Berkeley?”
She sighed, discouraged. “That’s Anand’s dream.”
“It’s a very good school.”
“I need to see more of the world.”
“LA is not the world, Sonya. It’s just LA.”
She took the acceptance letter from him, refolded it.
“Who will help me with Howard Street when you’re gone?” he asked.
She did not answer.
“Maybe Anand,” he murmured.
She glanced at him briefly, mildly surprised. Then her expression changed. She suddenly seemed drawn and older than seventeen.
He touched her face, nodding toward the house. “Your grandmother needs help putting away the food. I’ll be in soon.”
She wordlessly turned and strode back to the house, kicking an old apple core on the patio before disappearing inside.
The sun vanished behind the hill, leaving behind a gaseous trail of color. Elizabeth called to him through the open kitchen window. “Darshan, can you please bring some foil in from the garage?”
He waved, nodding, going around the side of the house.
A chill rose from the concrete floor as he entered the garage. Weaving his way through years of accumulated boxes, two-liter soda crates, and canned goods, he found an industrial-sized roll of foil on a workman’s table toward the back. There were several rusted garden tools spread out on its surface, as well as a roll of twine and several glass jars of seeds at the back edge by the wall. He ran his hand over the tools, like smoothing out dunes of sand, the tools shifting and clanking, giving way under his palm, melting into the table, everything undulating.
He blinked.
“Do you need help?” Mohan asked. His brother had come in through the kitchen, had propped open the door.
Darshan pulled his eyes from the tools. “No, I can manage.”
“Hand it to me,” Mohan insisted. “I will take it.”
Gripping the roll under his arm, Darshan shook his head.
Brow creased, his brother said more forcefully, “Let me help.”
“There is no point now.”
Mohan winced, then shook his fist with rage. Voice loud and furious, he said, “You owe me your respect.”
Jai rushed to the doorway. “What is this?” she said, pushing past Mohan. “What are you doing?”
“Bebe,” Mohan said, “I want to help.”
She glanced from him to the roll under Darshan’s arm. “It is only foil,” she replied.
He regarded her momentarily, and for one second, as he leaned over, seemed about to kneel before her. Instead he called to his family, to Lehna, to Dal, and to the recently married Amandev and her husband. Pushing the button to open the sectional garage door, which grated upward on its gears, he said, “I will not ever come back.”
It was a simple statement of fact, and it was clear that he hoped she would contradict him. But she did not. When he was outside next to his car, shuffling the family into their seats, she pressed the button, waiting until the sectional door touched the ground, then asked Darshan for the foil.
~ ~ ~
Darshan flipped the latch to unlock the sliding glass door to the patio. The leftover food was packed away, some of it sent home with guests, and the house had been tidied. The day was gone and inside was lit with the soft glow of lamps, making his reflection in the glass mirror-like against the darkness outside. He momentarily stared at himself, at his sunken eyes and graying, neatly trimmed beard. He pushed his hair back, noticing for the first time that his hairline was receding. Sliding the door to the left with a faint grinding in the track, he then pushed aside the screen and stepped into the cold night. The moon cast a dim glow on the leaves of Manmohan’s many trees. He took a deep, slow breath.
The priest who had presided over the service knocked politely behi
nd him.
“Bhaiji,” Darshan said, nodding at the priest. “I thought you had left with the others.”
The priest shrugged as if to say not yet. “The smell is wonderful, isn’t it? It is not quite the same as in India, but still, the scent of earth is familiar and comforting.”
There was a dullness in Darshan’s mind, a lack of emotion. “He provided a great deal of care and attention to this garden.”
“Do you regret that?”
Darshan mutely shook his head, finding the question odd.
The priest made a general, broad gesture toward the garden and the house. “He told me how hard you worked, what you did.”
“Did he?”
The priest nodded.
Darshan lowered his chin to his chest, his throat suddenly tight and painfully contracted. Directly beneath him, by the light inside, he could see several small wet circular marks darkening the cement patio, like light, fresh rain.
The Return of the Moneylender
2000
Family Tree
The house in Berkeley had settled into a pervasive quiet, broken only by the breath and hum of the old lady who dwelled there. During her youth in India, generations had cohabited under mud hut roofs, the elderly soothed by the bustle of family, by tradition and community. But not here. Not in America, where the Toors had been scattered across a vast network of modern cities by their accumulated wealth, believing themselves risen from and superior to the days of austerity and simplicity that had ruled their lives in the village.
Anomalous activity sprouted from the silence of that house, the senses muddled, Jai’s seventy-nine-year-old mind confused. Knitting sticks in the laundry hamper, tucked into a pair of her dead husband’s tube socks. A one-pound bag of flour on the shelf behind the television. Sofa cushions restuffed with folded blankets and bed pillows. Dirty mixing spoons in the utensil drawer. Fruit from Manmohan’s garden found rotting in the farthest reaches of the bathroom cupboard. All forgotten. This was how it began. When her children came to visit, she would on occasion surprise them by inadvertently happening upon these items during moments of lucidity, gaping at the objects with apologetic tears when they questioned her about them, then suddenly chuckling in amusement, waving a dismissive hand.