ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  Seven to nine sounds like a jail sentence.

  “… but think how gratified you’ll be when you bring your family to the States to become naturalized citizens. This is the immigrant story, you know? I mean, my parents were the same way. They got here with just two suitcases to their name, but they worked their asses off, and now they’re living the American dream—”

  “Your father has a villa and a street both wearing his name.”

  Rohit pauses. “Who told you that?”

  “He did.”

  “Okay. True. But my point is that this is what people do to get what they want. Trust me, these years are just going to fly by. You’ll make the money you need to make, and Mr. Brown will get you the green card, and I’ll be here to film it all along the way. When I’m not back at Princeton anyway.”

  “You are going back to college?”

  “Yeah, my mom won’t let me defer forever. But this film is my main thing. Maybe even my thesis. I’ll just go back and forth on the weekends or whatever, for however long it’ll take. And who knows what’ll happen in that time? Maybe I can even go to India and interview your family. How wild would that be? This story is so rich, and it’ll only get richer with time. All the best docs take, like, years to make, and I’m willing to put in the effort—”

  “I want to go home.”

  And though Anju is sure he has heard her clearly, Rohit asks: “What’s that?”

  “I want to go home. To Kumarakom. To my family.”

  She listens to the rigid silence on his end.

  “Go home?” For the first time, Anju hears a thin, hairline fracture in the usual cool of his voice. “Right now? What kind of ending is that?”

  “I don’t want this film anymore.”

  Shock renders Rohit speechless, but only briefly. “You don’t care about all the time that you and I have already put into this thing? This is my life, Anju. This is the first time that something I’ve worked on has had any significance for me.”

  “And what if nothing works out?”

  “Well then, we’ll film that too. I—” He expels a slow, deathbed sigh. “Why don’t you meet Mr. Brown with me? We’ll hash things out, we’ll even film it. Hey, we can make your indecision part of the film itself, you know, to show how complicated these decisions really are—”

  “The decision is not complicated. I want to buy a ticket home.”

  “Well, then buy it yourself.”

  He utters this sentence so coldly and quickly that she almost skims over its meaning. “You will not help me?” she asks.

  “I am trying to help you, Anju, but I’m also trying to make a good film. Like I said, I think that both these things—the film’s best interest and your best interest—converge really nicely for everybody. Right? Listen.” He switches to his Real Rohit voice with all the ease of Superman sliding on his Clark Kent spectacles; the change is just as unconvincing. “I know it’s scary out there. I shouldn’t get upset with you. Let’s just take a day off from each other before we say things we don’t mean, and I’ll call you in the morning. Okay?”

  She grips a handful of her own hair, tightly, but makes a calm, affirmative noise through sealed lips.

  “I’m on your side, Anju. You know that, right?”

  “Thank you. Yes. I know.”

  ANJU HAS $875 in her Folgers canister. The bills, uncurled and classified by their meager denominations, surround her in a semicircle, a configuration that seems appropriate for a sum that amounts to only half of what she needs. A flight to Delhi would cost about $1,000, but the flight to Kochi and the bus to Kottayam would cost $400 more.

  Around noon, Bird calls to check in. “You are sure you don’t want me at home?”

  “Home.” The word itself has crawled under Anju’s skin, so that she cannot hear it without wincing inside, like hearing a wrong note in a familiar tune.

  “No,” Anju says. “I am fine. I think I might go for a walk. To see a friend.”

  “You mean that boy with the camera?”

  Anju hesitates. “I will not be home till later.”

  “Fine. If you have to.”

  Anju hangs up and reviews her options, which takes almost no time, as she seems rather optionless at the moment. She does know that the answer lies no more with Bird than it lies with Rohit. She will not leave this country with debts. Slipping the bills into an envelope, she zips her savings into her coat.

  She hopes that the Solankis are not out of town.

  IT IS EIGHT P.M. when Anju boards the number 7 train, the vein that takes her to the coiled heart of Manhattan. There, she switches to a downtown train that rushes her to Chelsea. A group of boys in wind-breakers and popped collars board the train along with her, passing a plastic bottle of clear liquid between them. As their night begins, another day ends for the puffy-ankled woman sitting in the corner, clutching her purse and dozing along the many stops until her destination.

  Anju exits the train but takes a seat on the subway bench, where each sitter is allowed only the cubby of space between two slabs of wood. A homeless man lies slumped over two seats, defiantly malodorous. Unable to think properly in his company, Anju wanders to the tracks.

  I have failed. It is necessary for her to repeat the sentiment several times, as many times as is required for her body to unflinchingly bear the sting. From the moment she returns to the Solankis’ home, her failure will be present in every disapproving pair of eyes, and she should not shy away from it. She should accept it, like the blow of a severed branch, like another mouthful of Bird’s Cream of Wheat.

  On the tracks, a charcoal rat rustles with enthusiasm in a fallen pretzel bag. Anju once saw a Malayalam movie wherein the heroine, a young girl caught up in a forbidden love affair, flung herself before the bright eye of a roaring train. The suicide, the screaming, the plaintive violins, all this equaled a box office success. She imagines doing the same, hurling herself into the path of the number 1 train, which would give Rohit a spectacular ending, not a dry eye in the audience. Her last words over the phone, his attempt to save her, and then cut to: her body in an open coffin. Rohit interviewing Bird. Bird interviewing Rohit. Some closing thoughts, some tears, maybe some text about the high suicide rate in Kerala, and fade to black.

  She realizes that her hands are in fists. This is all a kind of thievery, the business of steering someone’s life. Happy or sad or unforeseen, her ending is hers.

  ANJU EMERGES FROM the wrong subway stop but decides to walk the rest of the way. She used to like the dark glitter of the neighborhood at night, the clatter of important heels on cement, the slick black windows of bars manned by dour bouncers, watching taxis prowl past. While climbing into a cab, a girl has her finger in one ear and her cell phone against the other, yelling: “We’re going to Orchard and Stan-ton! … ORCHARD AND STANTON!”

  Anju walks in a direction that someone told her was west, and someone else, with equal conviction, called east. She continues. Forward, not back, every block same as the last until finally she reaches the Monarch, a pale and spired Goliath among the surrounding brick and stone. She stares up at the spires with a clarity of mission that will send her, slingshot, over her doubts. But even biblical heroes must have suffered their butterflies.

  IT IS HALF PAST NINE when Anju strides through the glass doors of the Monarch as if she never left. All is the same, as enchanting as it always was—the cloudy marble, the fountains, the red carpet so soft it seems to melt underfoot. She hardly remembers the version of herself that passed beneath the expansive brass arms of the chandelier on that dizzying day in December.

  The doorman must be new, a young man who seems apologetic for mistakes he has yet to make. She gives him her name, hoping that the Solankis are there when he dials them.

  “Anju Melvin,” he says into the phone. He looks up at her, his eyebrows raised, and mouths, Right? She nods. “Anju Melvin. Yes, yes I’m sure … Mhm … Yes.”

  THE ELEVATOR RISES. In the corner is the tiny television scree
n tuned to the news. A weatherman warns of an approaching cold front from the east: “Bundle up out there, if you’re not already!” The ground presses into the soles of her feet.

  As the doors slide open, Anju sees Mrs. Solanki waiting in the door frame, her arms hanging by her sides. She is wearing her pale pink pajamas.

  “Hello,” Anju says.

  “You’re here.”

  Mrs. Solanki wears a strange expression, hovering somewhere between bewilderment and anger. Only now does Anju fully understand what she has done to this woman, and more of these realizations are yet to come. But before Anju can apologize, Mrs. Solanki catches her in a hug. Not the flimsy embrace of acquaintances, but simple and strong and fortifying.

  3.

  T IS MAY OF A YEAR that still feels new to Melvin. The sky shares his sense of promise in its cloudless blue, the same shade as the oceans in an atlas. Today is Sunday, and tomorrow Melvin will accompany Linno by train to the Chennai consulate. The consulate people have had a month to review her B-i visa application, and now, after a personal interview, they will decide if she should be crowned with a visa. Melvin made this trip before, with Anju, and has decided to wear his second-best shirt, as he did the previous time, for luck.

  When they first received notice of the interview, Melvin phoned Abraham to take four days off from work. He felt anxious calling, then irritated that calling a man two years his junior would make him feel anxious.

  “You’ll be gone all week?” Abraham asked.

  “Yes, I’m going to Chennai.” Abraham waited for Melvin to continue. “The Consulate Building. I have business there.”

  “Is everything all right? I only ask because this is short notice. We have a wedding in Ernakulam that week….”

  “Linno has a visa interview.” There was a certain pleasure to be had in hearing himself say these words.

  “Linno?” Abraham asked. “Your Linno?”

  “My Linno.”

  “That’s wonderful news!” Melvin was taken aback by the earnest excitement of this response. “So she is going to America too?”

  “I hope so,” Melvin said. “It’s not for certain.”

  “What a blessing, your daughters.” Abraham grew serious. “And what of the younger one? Have you heard from her?”

  “No, but I think we will. Very soon.”

  “Of course. She’s probably getting her green card as we speak. Ambitious, your children. Wish they could talk some sense into mine.”

  Melvin gave a tense laugh, but Abraham’s tone seemed genuine. Here was a man who had every reason to dislike Melvin, who had saved Melvin from a long drought of unemployment. It was a strange thing now, to feel pity for Abraham and impatience for his sons, who listened to their father no more than they listened to the old songs. Melvin wished that he could do something for Abraham, and though he was in no position to do so now, he allowed himself to imagine that maybe someday he would be.

  THE MAYHEM OF the upcoming election—rallies, speeches, slogans, signs—has barely slowed Linno’s pace. Days and nights she and Alice have worked to put together the seminars for the Duniya Expo, designing new invitations and business cards, making phone calls, and exchanging emails with potential partners who can hawk their wares in Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and other hotbeds of the South Asian populace. For Linno, most of these activities are for the benefit of the Chennai consulate, to prove her business credibility.

  Where Anju is concerned, Linno will answer only what is asked, but nothing more. With Georgie’s help, she has researched dozens of immigration websites that make the process sound swift enough that she may escape specific scrutiny. Usually, the questions concern business alone without delving into personal matters. She has also been researching several tourist books on New York, preparing a method to comb the city, block by block, in order to find Anju. Her brain is a map of boroughs, with multicolor rivers of subways. She will visit police stations and post signs for Anju’s whereabouts. She will speak to every person with whom Anju shared a single conversation, a list that includes Anju’s host family, her teachers, Shell Dun Fisher, and with all the meticulous logic of a detective, Linno will bring Anju back.

  Linno will not disclose to the Chennai consulate that for the past three days, she has fallen asleep at the kitchen table with her head in her arms, thus accounting for the shadows that rim her eyes. What keeps her awake is not her work but that inevitable moment of paralysis when she will step off the plane and all the maps and routes will flee her mind. The city that she thought she understood will rise before her, beclouding the tourist books that sought to reduce it to a digestible size. For the time being, a map allows her to pretend at some sort of control over a roiling city, allows her to forget, tentatively, this world of unknowns in which she is so very small, so powerless.

  · · ·

  LINNO AND MELVIN take a two-hour train ride from Kottayam to Ernakulam, where they buy tickets for the express train that will take them to Chennai. The platform in Ernakulam smells of sweat and smoke; it is swarming with passengers and wiry coolies whose heads are turbanned in towels so as to balance luggage that surpasses them in weight.

  As soon as Linno and Melvin join the currents of boarders, two coolies appear and offer to tote their bags onto the train, a job that requires only one coolie since Melvin can carry his own. One of the coolies hoists Linno’s suitcase onto his head while the other hustles alongside his partner, against Melvin’s wishes. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” the noncarrying coolie says. “We’re cousins.”

  Halfway down the platform, the coolie puts the suitcase down and extends a hand toward Melvin.

  “Fifty rupees,” he says.

  “But you haven’t even taken the bags on the train yet!” Melvin says.

  “Fifty now,” the coolie says, “and twenty-five more to finish the job. Plus what about my cousin here?” The cousin nods energetically, silent as a mime.

  “Your cousin did nothing.”

  “Hah, he put the suitcase on my head!”

  Not wanting to be late, Linno bargains them down to twenty rupees more. For all their negotiations, the coolies are deft and graceful as they veer around without bumping heads or stepping on feet. Linno and Melvin follow the coolie cousins into the train car, where they slide both suitcases onto the overhead rack and, grudgingly pocketing their payment, hurry off the train to aid other needy passengers.

  Across from Linno and Melvin is a dignified old man with a tall umbrella over his knees, his wife next to him holding a plastic bottle of water. They are college teachers in Chennai, they say, and have just enjoyed a few days’ vacation in their hometown of Ernakulam. “And you?” the man asks.

  “We are going to the consulate for her visa interview,” Melvin says.

  “So young to have a visa!” the woman says. Linno smiles, now even more anxious at what might be another possible objection made by her interview officer. She is twenty-one years old, too young to be interested in anything less than moving permanently to the States. She fingers the knot of her sleeve and looks out the window.

  Melvin listens to the teacher, who, as it turns out, is also the founder of what he calls a “public health organization.” One beautiful summer’s day, the teacher was walking to work when out of nowhere, like a revelation, excrement landed on his head. “You-man shit,” he declared. For days, the teacher had walked this same route to work, beneath the bridge of a lofted railway, never knowing that he should be wary of such unannounced shrapnel. For the teacher, the experience was repulsive, yet formative. He started a website (www.railshit.com) and an online petition to pressure the railway industry into rethinking their in-car potty system, which turned out to be no more than a glorified hole in the floors of the cars. “The more I talked to people,” the teacher explains, gesturing with the steel tip of his umbrella, “the more I realized that I am not the only victim. Do you know how much total waste falls from our trains every day?” The man snatches his wife’s water bottle as a visual ai
d and gives it a shake. “Three hundred thousand liters of waste per day. Per day! How can India be shining if shit is raining from our sky?”

  Melvin agrees to visit the website.

  “I still don’t like that website name,” the teacher’s wife says. She shoots her husband a look. “Maybe First World has better plumbing, but we don’t need their dirty talk. It’s not polite.”

  The husband raises an open palm in the way of a patient saint preaching to his flock. “Usually I am a courteous person. But the day I resort to pleasantries in this matter will be the day I wear someone’s crap as a hat.”

  EVENTUALLY, thankfully, the teacher and his wife fall quiet. Linno thrills to the first lurch, the shudder of metal all around her until the world is streaming by in blues and browns and greens, flares of clouds cut by the flight of birds. Passing through a paddy field, Linno sees a flash of red and, squinting, makes out a lone red Communist flag stuck at the intersection of two berms. Farther down: a few women with backs bent at acute angles, their hands pulling through the wet harvest as their mothers and grandmothers have done for years.

  Melvin and Linno decide to take turns sleeping so that one of them can watch the suitcases. He is the first to climb up onto the berth while she stares out the window beneath, thinking ahead to the next forty-eight hours, which may be among the slowest of her life. Rappai’s mother warned her about the whimsy of the Chennai consulate, as told to her by a cousin who arrived for a scheduled interview, only to be turned away because the American ambassador was paying a visit that day. When the cousin requested to speak to a manager, the official raised a finger and, with ominous drama, said in English: “Give me any more trouble and you will never set a chappal in the U.S. of A.”

  NEVER HAS LINNO spent so much time in lines as she does at the Chennai consulate. At least in line, she has a vague sense of order. Her father, on the other hand, was left standing outside the gate, as only applicants were allowed to enter. And though she would have liked an ally, she has now grown familiar with the back of the person in front of her, who seems oblivious to her fixation on the nape of his neck. His hair ends in a neat, straight line above his collar, though a few strays compromise the integrity of his hairline. Sometimes he blots his neck with a handkerchief, despite the air-conditioning.