by Laura Furman
“You know what I hate?”
Zubin had a strange urge to touch her. It wasn’t a sexual thing, he didn’t think. He just wanted to take her hand. “What?”
“Crows.”
Zubin smiled.
“You probably think they’re poetic or something.”
“No.”
“Like Edgar Alan Poe.”
“That was a raven.”
“Edgar Allan Poetic.” She giggled.
“This kind of verbal play is encouraging,” Zubin said. “If only you would apply it to your practice tests.”
“I can’t concentrate at home,” Julia said. “There are too many distractions.”
“Like what?” Julia's room was the quietest place he’d been in Bombay.
“My father.”
The steps opened suddenly onto the temple tank: a dark green square of water cut out of the stone. Below them, a schoolgirl in a purple jumper and a white blouse, her hair plaited with two red ribbons, was filling a brass jug. At the other end a laborer cleared muck from the bottom with an iron spade. His grandmother had brought him here when he was a kid. She had described the city as it had been: just the sea and the fishing villages clinging to the rocks, the lush, green hills, and in the hills these hive-shaped temples, surrounded by the tiny colored houses of the priests. The concrete-block apartments were still visible on the Malabar side of the tank, but if you faced the sea you could ignore them.
“My father keeps me locked up in a cage,” Julia said mournfully.
“Although he lets you out for Fire and Ice,” Zubin observed.
“He doesn’t. He ignores it when I go to Fire and Ice. All he’d have to do is look in at night. I don’t put pillows in the bed or anything.”
“He's probably trying to respect your privacy.”
“I’m his kid. I’m not supposed to have privacy.” She sat down suddenly on the steps, but she didn’t seem upset. She shaded her eyes with her hand. He liked the way she looked, looking—more serious than he’d seen her before.
“Do you think it's beautiful here?” he asked.
The sun had gone behind the buildings, and was setting over the sea and the slum on the rocks above the water. There was an orange glaze over half the tank; the other, shadowed half was green and cold. Shocked-looking white ducks with orange feet stood in the shade, each facing a different direction, and on the opposite side two boys played an impossibly old-fashioned game, whooping as they rolled a worn-out bicycle tire along the steps with a stick. All around them bells were ringing.
“I think lots of things are beautiful,” Julia said slowly. “If you see them at the right time. But you come back and the light is different, or someone's left some trash, or you’re in a bad mood—or whatever. Everything gets ugly.”
“This is what your essay is about.” He didn’t think before he said it; it just came to him.
“The Banganga Tank?”
“Beauty,” he said.
She frowned.
“It's your idea.”
She was trying not to show she was pleased. Her mouth turned up at the corners, and she scowled to hide it, “I guess that's okay. I guess it doesn’t really matter what you choose.”
Julia was a virgin, but Anouk wasn’t. Anouk was Bernie's daughter; she lived in a fancy house behind a carved wooden gate, on one of the winding lanes at Cumbala Hill. Julia liked the ornamental garden, with brushed-steel plaques that identified the plants in English and Latin, and the blue ceramic pool full of lumpy-headed white-and-orange goldfish. Behind the goldfish pond was a cedar sauna, and it was in the sauna that it had happened. The boy wasn’t especially cute, but he was distantly related to the royal house of Jodhpur. They’d only done it once; according to Anouk that was all it took, before you could consider yourself ready for a real boyfriend at university.
“It's something to get over with,” Anouk said. “You simply hold your breath.” They were listening to the Shakira album in Anouk's room, which was covered with pictures of models from magazines. There were even a few pictures of Anouk, who was tall enough for print ads, but not to go to Europe and be on runways. She was also in a Colgate commercial that you saw on the Hindi stations. Being Anouk's best friend was the thing that saved Julia at the American School, where the kids talked about their fathers’ jobs and their vacation houses even more than they had in Paris. At least at the school in Paris they’d gotten to take a lot of trips—to museums, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and Monet's house at Giverny
There was no question of losing her virginity to any of the boys at school. Everyone would know about it the next day.
“You should have done it with Markus,” Anouk said, for the hundredth time, one afternoon when they were lying on the floor of her bedroom, flipping through magazines.
Julia sometimes thought the same thing; it was hard to describe why they hadn’t done it. They’d talked about it, like they’d talked about everything, endlessly, late at night on the phone, as if they were the only people awake in the city. Markus was her best friend—still, when she was sad, he was the one she wanted to talk to—but when they kissed he put his tongue too far into her mouth and moved it around in a way that made her want to gag. He was grateful when she took off her top and let him put his hand underneath her bra, and sometimes she thought he was relieved too, when she said no to other things.
“You could write him,” Anouk suggested.
“I’d love him to come visit,” Julia allowed.
“Visit and come.”
“Gross.”
Anouk looked at her sternly. She had fair skin and short hair that flipped up underneath her ears. She had cat-shaped green eyes exactly like the ones in the picture of her French grandmother, which stared out of an ivory frame on a table in the hall.
“What about your tutor?”
Julia pretended to be horrified. “Zubin?”
“He's cute, right?”
“He's about a million years older than us.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-nine, I think.”
Anouk went into her dresser and rummaged around. “Just in case,” she said innocently, tossing Julia a little foil-wrapped packet.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go—you weren’t supposed to be the one who got the condom—but you weren’t supposed to go to high school in Bombay, to live alone with your father, or to lose your virginity to your SAT tutor. She wondered if she and Zubin would do it on the mattress in his room, or if he would press her up against the wall, like in 9∀Weeks.
“You better call me, like, the second after,” Anouk instructed her.∀
She almost told Anouk about the virginity dream, and then didn’t. She didn’t really want to hear her friend's interpretation.
It was unclear where she and Markus would’ve done it, since at that time boys weren’t allowed in her room. There were a lot of rules, particularly after her mother left. When she was out, around eleven, her father would message her mobile, something like: WHAT TIME, MISSY? or simply, ETA? If she didn’t send one right back, he would call. She would roll her eyes, at the café or the party or the club, and say to Markus, “My dad.”
“Well,” Markus would say. “You’re his daughter.”
When she came home, her father would be waiting on the couch with a book. He read the same books over and over, especially the ones by Russians. She would have to come in and give him a kiss, and if he smelled cigarettes he would ask to see her bag.
“You can’t look in my bag,” she would say, and her father would hold out his hand. “Everybody else smokes,” she told him. “I can’t help smelling like it.” She was always careful to give Markus her Dunhills before she went home.
“Don’t you trust me?” she said sometimes (especially when she was drunk).
Her father smiled. “No. I love you too much for that.”
It was pouring and the rain almost shrieked on Zubin's tin roof, which still hadn’t been repaired. They were working on rea
ding comprehension; a test two years ago had used Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress.” Zubin preferred “The Garden,” but he’d had more success teaching “To His Coy Mistress” to his students; they told him it seemed “modern.” Many of his students seemed to think that sex was a relatively new invention.
“It's a persuasive poem,” Zubin said. “In a way, it has something in common with an essay.”
Julia narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, persuasive?”
“He wants to sleep with her.”
“And she doesn’t want to.”
“Right,” Zubin said.
“Is she a virgin?”
“You tell me.” Zubin remembered legions of teachers singsonging exactly those words. “Look at line twenty-eight.”
“That's disgusting.”
“Good,” he said. “You understand it. That's what the poet wanted—to shock her a little.”
“That's so manipulative!”
It was amazing, he thought, the way Americans all embraced that kind of psychobabble. Language is manipulative, he wanted to tell her.
“I think it might have been very convincing,” he said instead.
“Vegetable love?”
“It's strange, and that's what makes it vivid. The so-called metaphysical poets are known for this kind of conceit.”
“That they were conceited?”
“Conceit,” Zubin said. “Write this down.” He gave her the definition; he sounded conceited.
“The sun is like a flower that blooms for just one hour,” Julia said suddenly.
“That's the opposite,” Zubin said. “A comparison so common that it doesn’t mean anything—you see the difference?”
Julia nodded wearily. It was too hot in the room. Zubin got up and propped the window open with the wooden stop. Water sluiced off the dark, shiny leaves of the magnolia.
“What is that?”
“What?”
“That thing, about the sun.”
She kicked her foot petulantly against his desk. The hammering outside was like an echo, miraculously persisting in spite of the rain. “Ray Bradbury,” she said finally. “We read it in school.”
“I know that story,” Zubin said. “With the kids on Venus. It rains for seven years, and then the sun comes out and they lock the girl in the closet. Why do they lock her up?”
“Because she's from Earth. She's the only one who's seen it.”
“The sun.”
Julia nodded. “They’re all jealous.”
People thought she could go out all the time because she was American. She let them think it. One night she decided to stop bothering with the outside stairs; she was wearing new jeans that her mother had sent her; purple cowboy boots and a sparkly silver halter top that showed off her stomach. She had a shawl for outside, but she didn’t put it on right away. Her father was working in his study with the door cracked open.
The clock in the hall said ten twenty. Her boots made a loud noise on the tiles.
“Hi,” her father called.
“Hi.”
“Where are you going?”
“A party.”
“Where?”
“Juhu.” She stepped into his study. “On the beach.”
He put the book down and took off his glasses. “Do you find that many people are doing Ecstasy—when you go to these parties?”
“Dad.”
“I’m not being critical—I read an article about it in Time. My interest is purely anthropological.”
“Yes,” Julia said. “All the time. We’re all on Ecstasy from the moment we wake up in the morning.”
“That's what I thought.”
“I have to go.”
“I don’t want to keep you.” He smiled. “Well I do, but—” Her father was charming; it was like a reflex.
“See you in the morning,” she said.
The worst thing was that her father knew she knew. He might have thought Julia knew even before she actually did; that was when he started letting her do things like go out at ten thirty, and smoke on the staircase outside her bedroom. It was as if she’d entered into a kind of pact without knowing it; and by the time she found out why they were in Bombay for real, it was too late to change her mind.
It was Anouk who told her, one humid night when they were having their tennis lesson at Willingdon. The air was so hazy that Julia kept losing the ball in the sodium lights. They didn’t notice who’d come in and taken the last court next to the parking lot until the lesson was over. Then Anouk said: “Wow, look—Papa !” Bernie lobbed the ball and waved; as they walked toward the other court, Julia's father set up for an overhead and smashed the ball into the net. He raised his fist in mock anger, and grinned at them.
“Good lesson?”
“Julia did well.”
“I did not.”
“Wait for Bernie to finish me off,” Julia's father said. “Then we’ll take you home.”
“How much longer?”
“When we’re finished,” said Bernie sharply.
“On sort ce soir. ”
“On va voir,” her father said. Anouk started to say something and stopped. She caught one ankle behind her back calmly, stretched, and shifted her attention to Julia's father. “How long?”
He smiled. “Not more than twenty.”
They waited in the enclosure, behind a thin white net that was meant to keep out the balls, but didn’t, and ordered fresh lime sodas.
“We need an hour to get ready, at least.”
“I’m not going.”
“Yes you are.”
Anouk put her legs up on the table and Julia did the same and they compared: Anouk's were longer and thinner, but Julias had a better shape. Julia's phone beeped.
“It's from Zubin.”
Anouk took the phone.
“It's just about my lesson.”
Anouk read Zubin's message in an English accent: CAN WE SHIFT FROM
FIVE TO SIX ON THURSDAY?
“He doesn’t talk like that,” Julia said, but she knew what Anouk meant. Zubin was the only person she knew who wrote SMS in full sentences, without any abbreviations.
Anouk tipped her head back and shut her eyes. Her throat was smooth and brown and underneath her sleeveless white top, her breasts were outlined, the nipples pointing up. “Tell him I’m hot for him.”
“You’re a flirt.”
Anouk sat up and looked at the court. Now Bernie was serving. Both men had long, dark stains down the fronts of their shirts. A little bit of a breeze was coming from the trees behind the courts; Julia felt the sweat between her shoulders. She thought she’d gone too far, and she was glad when Anouk said, “When are they going to be finished?”
“They’ll be done in a second. I think they both just play ’cause the other one wants to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, my dad never played in Paris.”
“Mine did,” Anouk said.
“So maybe he just likes playing with your dad.”
Anouk tilted her head to the side for a minute, as if she were thinking. “He would have to though.”
The adrenaline from the fight they’d almost had, defused a minute before, came flooding back. She could feel her pulse in her wrists. “What do you mean?”
Her friend opened her eyes wide. “I mean, your dad's probably grateful.”
“Grateful for what ?”
“The job.”
“He had a good job before.”
Anouk blinked incredulously. “Are you serious?”
“He was the operations manager in Central Asia.”
“Was,” Anouk said.
“Yeah, well,” Julia said. “He didn’t want to go back to the States after my mom did.”
“My God,” Anouk said. “That's what they told you?”
Julia looked at her. Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it. But she didn’t say anything.
“You have it backwards,” Anouk said. “Your mother left becaus
e of what happened. She went to America, because she knew your father couldn’t. There was an article about it in Nefte Compass—I couldn’t read it, because it was in Russian, but my dad read it.” She lifted her beautiful eyes to Julia’s. “My dad said it wasn’t fair. He said they shouldn’t’ve called your dad a crook.”
“Four–five,” her father called. “Your service.”
“But I guess your mom didn’t understand that.”
Cars were inching out of the club. Julia could see the red brake lights between the purple blossoms of the hedge that separated the court from the drive.
“It doesn’t matter,” Anouk said. “You said he wouldn’t have gone back anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether he couldhave.”
A car backed up, beeping. Someone yelled directions in Hindi.
“And it didn’t get reported in America or anything. My father says he's lucky he could still work in Europe—probably not in oil, but anything else. He doesn’t want to go back to the States anyway—alors, c’est pas grand chose.”
The game had finished. Their fathers were collecting the balls from the corners of the court.
“Ready?” her father called, but Julia was already hurrying across the court. By the time she got out to the drive she was jogging, zigzagging through the cars clogging the lot, out into the hot nighttime haze of the road. She was lucky to find an empty taxi. They pulled out into the mass of traffic in front of the Hagi Ali and stopped. The driver looked at her in the mirror for instructions.
“Malabar Hill,” she said. “Hanging Garden.”
Zubin was actually working on the essay, sitting at his desk by the open window, when he heard his name. Or maybe hallucinated his name: a bad sign. But it wasn’t his fault. His mother had given him a bottle of sam-buca, which someone had brought her from the duty-free shop in the Frankfurt airport.
“I was thinking of giving it to the Mehtas but he's stopped drinking entirely. I could only think of you.”
“You’re the person she thought would get the most use out of it,” his father contributed.
Now Zubin was having little drinks (really half drinks) as he tried to apply to college. He had decided that there would be nothing wrong with writing a first draft for Julia, as long as she put it in her own words later. The only problem was getting started. He remembered his own essay perfectly, unfortunately on an unrelated subject. He had written, much to his English teacher's dismay, about comic books.