by Manju Kapur
Difficult. She didn’t know what her goals were, but that was not something anybody need know.
Glibly she wrote about her proficiency in English, her long study of literature, her love of books, her eagerness to combine the skills she had been taught in India with newer ones acquired in this country, her wish to contribute to society.
She didn’t believe all she was writing, because she was nervous about a profession that wasn’t completely academic. I can always change track if I don’t like it, she told herself, this is a place that allows change.
Ananda repeated her assurances right back to her. ‘The important thing is to start somewhere. You don’t want to teach in a school, you can’t teach in a university, what options do you have? I’ve talked to people, it’s a good career,’ that is, Mandy had a cousin who was a librarian.
‘Really? Who?’
‘Some patient. I mentioned my wife was joining Library School and you should have heard her go on. Wonderful occupation, much better than working in an office, you meet a lot of people, jobs are comparatively easier to get.’
‘Yeah, Beth says the same.’
‘In life you have to have courage.’
‘It’s a professional course.’
‘That’s what you need, don’t you?’
He was being so supportive she decided it was churlish to hold on to her grouse about the California trip. Maybe there were some things a man had to do alone. And maybe it would have been unpleasant and embarrassing, revealing such private details before unknown American doctors. Hours had been spent over this issue with Gayatri and the group, now she was bored by it. It had stopped bothering her; she let it go.
He was becoming a better lover too; she hardly had to resort to herself. In deference to her, he had even stopped looking at the clock. She owed it to him to stop complaining about his transgressions.
On the last day of January, Nina dropped off the first part of her admission form at the Registrar’s office, and the remaining part at the office of the Assistant Administrator, Admissions, Library School. For all her doubts about this as a career, she hoped she would be accepted. In four weeks she would be coming this way again to submit her application for a scholarship.
The pavement was flecked with pellets of salt, there were huge banks of snow on either side of the path. Her boots had a little leak in them, she had not applied enough water repellent, and the salt had traced wavy lines along the surface of the leather, making them look hideous. Her toes felt like tubes of ice. The sky was a pale blue with strips of cloud. With the wind chill factor, it was definitely below zero. In Delhi at this time, flowers were beginning to bloom, the gentle sun would be caressing all its denizens, and everybody would be out in gardens, parks, roundabouts, relishing the few weeks before the heat came.
She took a slight detour, reached the warm red façade of Fader’s, entered the drugstore, sat on a high stool at the small sandwich bar near the window and ordered a strawberry milkshake. The course description lay in her bag and she took it out to read again. It sounded technical and different from anything she was used to. Perhaps her love of books had made her a maverick.
The next time she walked to the Killam Library, it was for an interview with the head of the Library Science Department, Dr Claude Cunningham. The weather had changed. No need to wrap a shawl around her head, wear her heavy, ugly coat or walk against an icy wind. The sky was overcast, but the air had a warm undercurrent to it. The huge piles of dirty sidewalk snow were melting, here and there some blades of grass could be seen.
Dr Claude Cunningham was a lovely man with an English accent, interested in her qualifications, her experience in libraries, how she saw her future, why had she switched from teaching, why not go in for a B Ed, or a PhD, might her bent not be more academic?
At this Nina paused, but the thought of the stiff competition for thirty five seats decided her against complete honesty. Her year at the HRL had shown her how much there was to libraries, she wanted to deepen that knowledge.
The Head was receptive. Her hours there could qualify as the work experience that was compulsory. She did realise that graduate school was full time, any job that took more than ten hours a week was discouraged? Yes, she had read the brochures, yes, thank you Dr Cunningham, thank you very much.
When Nina told Ananda about the interview, and that Dr Cunningham had talked as though she were already part of the school, Ananda’s confidence soon overshadowed her own more tentative hopes. ‘There is no doubt you will get in. You read so much, you have work experience, you have been a teacher of literature, you are serious and steady. In fact I am hoping for both admission and financial assistance.’
Nina looked at him gratefully. Things were getting better between them, the early despair and uneasiness had slowly abated.
A few months later Nina got the letter they had all been hoping for.
She stared at it, this promise of a degree recognised by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and with it the possibility of a job anywhere in North America.
Ananda was triumphant. The fee waiver especially moved him; this is a generous system, the worthy are always helped. Of course its renewal was dependent on an A average, but Indians always excelled, nothing to worry about.
Her admission warranted a phone call home. Her mother’s response was predictable, first the warmness of approval, then the anxiety that sounded like accusation. As a student, would she be able to give Ananda enough attention? Might she not be a drain on his resources? And did this mean she was postponing having a child, she would soon be thirty three.
Nina gritted her teeth. Her mother was such a vehicle of patriarchy, why was her concern for her daughter always expressed through worry about Ananda’s well-being? As for a child, both of them thought they could still wait a bit, she wasn’t that old after all. Besides, if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t the end of the world.
‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ shouted Ananda into the phone, ‘this is wonderful news. With a fee waiver it’ll hardly cost anything, and she’ll have a Canadian qualification.’
The mother was forced to be content with things not having turned out the way she had imagined. Pictures of children and a loving grandmother grew dimmer.
From the uncle there was wholehearted approval. Respectable integration always to be welcomed, and beti, don’t worry if this doesn’t pay very highly, you have a doctor for a husband. Gainful occupation is more important than money in your case.
The group was pleased. From being controlled by circumstances, Nina was taking the first steps towards autonomy.
Sitting across from her Gayatri felt all the pride of a parent. Of course Nina would perform brilliantly, and keep her scholarship.
Beth told her she would never regret her decision; she had loved every minute of her two years at Dal. Now that she had gotten a job for fourteen thousand five hundred dollars at Acadia University, she and Jerry were moving to Wolfville.
Her colleagues at the HRL greeted the news with enthusiasm. Nina had taken a bag of small chocolate bars to work—trying to replicate the distribution of sweets such news would engender at home.
The ones Nina felt least close to were the most elaborately rewarded. Gary and Sue were treated to dinner at La Gondola, down by the train station. The atmosphere was warm; the wall- paper red velvet, the place crowded, the candles on each table romantic. The paper napkins bore the legend of Papa Gino, poor boy from Italy, now enterprising immigrant. She hoped she would be as successful as Papa Gino.
The two couples talked and laughed and everything seemed right.
The rest of the summer passed in anticipation of fall. Nina noticed her status had risen, both in her group and in her place of work. She was following the path her husband had trodden when he came here all those years ago, getting a degree that would affect the makeover of her Canadian identity. Two years was a small price to pay for such a metamorphosis, said Ananda.
iii
When Nina’s life
as a student began, she was afraid she would not only be the sole foreigner, but also the oldest among thirty four young Canadians, sticking out like a sore thumb.
But she had underestimated the wide reach of North American education. The thumb had companionable fingers—there was a student each from Malaysia, Lesotho, England and the USA. Others from Saskatchewan, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario also claimed foreigner status, while fifteen came from the Maritimes. As for age, one woman mentioned a grandchild, several mentioned children, many mentioned spouses.
For the next two years, hers was the comfort of being part of a student body, no longer the outsider, one of many bound together by a huge, squat, grey institutional building, five floors high, crammed with books, learning and administration.
Ananda was fond of constantly reminding her how lucky she was. Unlimited facilities were at her disposal. She thought of the torn, vandalised books she had had to do with in Delhi University, of all the texts it was impossible to get, even in a library, and she agreed wholeheartedly.
The technical aspect of the course was apparent from the start. If she had doubts about learning to do rather than think, she reminded herself that for an immigrant changed situations meant changed priorities. Her group assured her she had to move in ways that enabled rather than disabled her.
In accessing books for others, she had to learn how to wield the keys to what lay within, rather than open the locks herself. In the first semester, there was a whole course on how to catalogue, pin, fix and locate the quantities of print that had been spewed into the world since Gutenberg’s invention in the mid fifteenth century. From reports to books, skittish behaviour was common, as texts refused to confine themselves to one category.
The Killam collection was catalogued according to the Library of Congress system, while the lab in the Library School had books catalogued under the Dewey Decimal system. Students were expected to know how to use both, to be able to decide where a book’s rightful place was in all the miles of library shelf. They had to know how to look up reference material and track down articles. Nina’s respect for professional librarians grew. This was the grind they passed through before earning themselves places behind reference desks in the libraries of North America.
Now Nina was the one to get up first, before Ananda. Her day started at eight thirty, whereas he only had to be at the clinic by nine. It took fifteen minutes to walk to the Killam. On the mornings she was too tired to get up early, Ananda would drop her.
She worried that he might mind the hours spent away from home. ‘I know how hard a student has to work,’ Ananda assured her. ‘Since we don’t have children, it’s not such a sacrifice.’
Damning words. She searched his face for signs of grief, but there was none.
‘Do you mind?’
‘You didn’t seem much interested in my sperm report.’
‘Healthy sperm doesn’t necessarily lead to a baby, otherwise we would have had one by now.’
‘We’ll examine our options when your course gets over.’
‘Yes, we are in the land of technology.’
‘Exactly.’
As Nina walked to and from the university, brilliant leaves showered their benefits on her and turned her preoccupied mind to beauty. Her second fall here, her sense of wonder was still as keen as she watched autumn colours shade into the austerities of winter. She often emerged from school when it was dark, and wanting to shake off the sense of closed spaces, she chose to walk home, instead of calling Ananda or taking the bus. All through the long winter she walked, through the snow, the wind and the drifts. For the second time, she marvelled at the intricate designs made by bare branches outlined against the sky. Initially so dark, branches and twigs whitened under puffy snow covers, then in times of slight warmth and subsequent freezing, became encased in slick and shiny ice, lengthening into points here and there. She wrapped the warmest of her shawls around her head, trying to protect her ears against the burning cold, trapping the moisture of her breath against her skin.
One of the drawbacks of the Killam was that classrooms were completely sealed off. Most of the library sessions took place in room 406, on the fourth floor, around the corner from the Department. It was a room of three stone walls, with curtains on the fourth side shielding them from the corridor. Push those aside, and you could see an identical wall on the opposite end of the concrete quadrangle.
Gradually Nina got used to being cocooned in white fluorescent light. The claustrophobia receded along with memories of how open everything was in India. Her old self was, day by day, overlaid by the new things she was experiencing.
At Library School, they considered themselves a self-contained family unit within the larger university framework. They had their own lab, reference sections, classrooms, lockers, notice boards, coffee and tea centre with oven-toaster and fridge, an informal seating area where they had what they called fireside chats with the head once a week to discuss department news. As a scholarship student, Nina had to look after the lab on the other side of the staff rooms, re-shelve books, make sure the room was clean and tidy before their get-togethers.
Friday noon was usually reserved for guest speakers. The second time Nina saw the librarian of the HRL was when she came to talk about issues of censorship at the local public library and how to handle them.
By Friday evening, a party feeling pervaded as staff, students and spouses gathered over drinks. When Ananda came, he let it be known that he was a graduate of the Dental School, a place where his uncle and his partner sometimes gave lectures to dentistry students on Friday afternoons. Maybe when Nina became a librarian and brought home the bacon, he could become a student again and specialise.
The nascent librarians looked at him, smiled, nodded and appeared interested. For the first time he was socialising with people Nina knew, instead of the other way around. She found she was afraid he would say something to demonstrate how Canadian he was. All said and done, she preferred the smaller gatherings.
iv
Among the students of the Library School was one who looked upon Nina and found her attractive. Anton liked Asian women; he found them warm, intelligent, gentle and empathetic. Settled in America, he himself was two generations away from the Russian peasant. His hair was blonde, short and curly, his skin somewhat weather-beaten, his small eyes a bright blue, his hands and body square, his height medium.
During coffee breaks he often headed towards her, ‘My wife is Indian,’ he said.
‘Indian?’
‘Like you. Though she speaks differently.’
‘What part of India?’
‘It’s the West Indies. Trinidad.’
Foreigners understood nothing. ‘We don’t consider that India.’
‘Her grandparents came from your country.’
A pause.
‘What does your wife do?’
‘She’s a nurse in a children’s hospital.’
‘How come you are in separate places?’
‘It’s cheaper to study here, and the American Library Association recognises it.’
The break over, they drifted back to class.
Before one of the get-togethers: ‘Introduce me to your husband.’
Nina couldn’t think of one thing they had in common, but replied, ‘Sure—if he comes. He can’t always attend. I used to work part-time on Friday evenings, so he started fixing to do other things then.’
‘What is he?’
‘Dentist.’
His face crinkled. ‘I don’t think I know any dentists. This will be a first.’
‘Yet your teeth are perfect.’
‘I mean socially. I was too scared of my dentist to ever want to know her.’
‘Ananda is not at all frightening.’
‘Or what would you be doing with him?’
When Ananda did come, Anton sought him out, but found him full of Canada, his dental setup and his achievements. His wife’s brother, a little less genuine than his Lakshmi, also tended t
o talk like this; maybe some male immigrants caught the competitive bug easily.
‘I see you have met my husband,’ remarked Nina, the Monday after.
Anton smiled his brilliant, white, even-toothed American smile.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, what did you think?’
The smile went as he looked at her. ‘Not good enough for you,’ he said, and turned deliberately into class. She was left confused—which meant that Anton had succeeded in his intentions. Their first field trip in December was his target. By then he hoped to persuade her into something more intimate.
Library School assumed an excitement for Nina that she hadn’t anticipated. Everybody was so nice and friendly. By now she and Anton had fallen into a bantering relationship. They were both married, and to keep things clear, she made frequent references to his wife and her husband. He in turn would grin and turn the conversation back to some personal aspect. Were all women from her country as intriguing? Why, Nina countered, did he want her to generalise about millions of women? And so on—inconsequential, but for the undercurrents that made each word significant.
Soon it was accepted that they had lunch or coffee together. He was easy to talk to, but her tendency to linger over what he said bothered her. Here in Canada, men and women often connected on platonic levels, it was such an immigrant-like thing to be disturbed by some man who paid her attention. Perhaps she should go back to India. No question of platonic levels there. Every male–female interaction was suspect.
In December Ananda paid three hundred and fifty dollars so that his wife could go to Ottawa to tour the National Library, the National Science Library and the National Archives.
Mandy entirely approved of the field trip. ‘Who knows, maybe she’ll take a lover there,’ she teased, watching Ananda’s face.
The husband regretted the impulse that had made him tell Mandy about Nina’s trip. He normally preferred to keep the two parts of his life separate, but the prospect of all that lovely free time had dented his usual caution. ‘My wife is not like that,’ he said briefly, and it was the words ‘my wife’ that led to their first fight.