by Anne Cherian
She hoped she would not disappoint him and tried to still her own disappointment. What was keeping him?
When Neel returned, he said quietly, without looking at her, “Why don’t I sleep on the little bed tonight? I think we are both tired and need our rest.”
He locked himself in the bathroom, thankful for the hot showers in five-star hotels. He stood under the water for a long time, remembering Caroline and how she had kissed this part, caressed the other, licked and loved him, her blond hair soft and fine and sparkly. He had never desired her this much, not even in the beginning of their relationship when they made love all the time and everywhere, against the fridge, on the dining-room table, in the shower. Just one day with Leila and he regretted having insisted Caroline be a closet girlfriend. Why hadn’t he married her? Who cared about degrees? He had enough for both of them. Why had he refused her invitation to meet her parents in Wisconsin last Christmas? He was stupid, stupid, still afraid of rejection, still seeing Savannah’s parents in his mind’s eye, not giving Caroline’s family a chance.
He would make it up to her, continue seeing her when he returned to San Francisco. He leaned against the wall, suffused with longing, his body quivering, his head spinning a little from the heat. He pictured her white perfection, seducing himself into physical communion with her. When he finally got out of the shower, his heart was beating madly, and he was so spent he had to sit on the edge of the bathtub.
He took his time brushing his teeth and flossing. He wanted Leila to fall asleep so he could pass by the bed quickly, without having to talk, make an excuse as to why he wasn’t approaching her bed.
Leila could not sleep. She wished he were beside her. She wanted to experience sex, longed to be initiated into womanhood, finally to partake in the whispered conversations between married women. She had not expected he would be traditional enough to follow the priest’s recommendation. She had the desire, but not the courage, to go to his bed. And even if she did slide in beside him, she had no idea what to do.
This morning Smita had smiled and whispered, “Tonight, huh?” Leila could make out his long form and wondered how he could sleep. The nightie felt unfamiliar, but her tears were not. She had cried herself to sleep so many times before, but had not expected to do so on her wedding night.
When Leila awoke the next day she was surprised that she had slept—and that she felt rested. Where was he? She looked around the room, filled with pale morning light despite the thick, dark curtains she had drawn together the night before. He had slept on the other bed. Had he gone?
Neel heard her stirring and decided he should get up. His legs ached from being curled up all night on the child-size mattress. It seemed to him that every time he fell asleep, a lump in the mattress or a strange dream woke him. His face, especially his eyes, felt heavy from lack of sleep.
Leila’s heart beat rapidly when she heard him, almost bursting out of her when his pajama-clad body appeared. He was still here. She smiled, her lips keeping their curve even when their eyes met. She didn’t want to stare, and looked away. But her mind whirred with questions. Had his eye been like that yesterday or had something happened in the middle of the night? Was this how he really looked?
“Goo morning,” Neel mumbled. “I’ll go wash up,” he started toward the bathroom, “if that’s all right with you?”
“What the hell?” He didn’t know he had said the words aloud till he heard them, the sound echoing slightly in the cavelike bathroom. He peered at his left eye. No wonder his eyes felt heavy. There was a large bump on the upper lid. How had he got a sty overnight? He never got sties. Neel shook the marbled counter in anger. It was this damn country. He had stayed here too long. His previous trips were always for ten days or maximum, two weeks. Now this had happened. It wasn’t the usual foreigner complaint of Delhi belly, it was worse. As he soaked the hand towel in hot water to make a compress, he hoped the sty would disappear by the time he left for the States.
“I must have developed a sudden sty overnight,” he felt compelled to explain when he finally came out of the bathroom.
“Oh,” Leila responded, thinking thank God, it isn’t a permanent condition. For a while she had wondered if she had simply not noticed his eye in their two emotional, life-changing meetings. Now she took a closer look. “I don’t think it’s a sty. It looks like a spider’s lick.”
“Spiders don’t lick.”
“I know. It’s what we say when something like this happens in the night.”
“You’ve had this before?”
“My sister Kila did. A tiny creature must have bitten you, but Appa likes to say it’s the spider.”
“How long before it goes away?” Neel wondered which tiny creature in this land of infinitesimal critters had got to him last night. This, too, in a five-star hotel.
“It depends on your body.” Leila found that suddenly she was no longer shy or shamefaced around him. “It could go by this evening or maybe tomorrow.”
“Let’s hope it’s this evening,” Neel said, relieved at her answer.
THE CONCIERGE ASSURED THEM it was a perfect Ooty day: “Lovely blue sky, very fine sun.” He suggested a walk around the lake, and Neel agreed, glad that the sunglasses would cover up his eye.
A rush of wings flew past. “Two for joy,” Leila said spontaneously, pointing to the mynah birds now sitting on a bush.
“What?” His response was automatic, the one he always used when he wasn’t listening. He wished he were yelling at his family instead of walking beside her. Tattappa, Mummy, and Aunty Vimla, the three Machiavellis, had a lot to answer for. They might think themselves invincible, but he belonged to the same family. Surely, if anyone could find a way out of this marriage, it would be he.
“It’s what we said as children. Don’t you remember? One for sorrow, two for joy, and so on.” She wanted to get close to him, and words were the only way she knew how.
“Boys didn’t do that.”
“It’s even the title of a book by Rumer Godden, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy.”
As the last word left her lips, she realized that nervousness had made her confuse the title Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy with the childish saying. She was wondering if she should correct herself, when he said “I’ve never heard of Rumer Godden.”
He didn’t read fiction. But then she didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about him. “I keep forgetting you taught English. What is your favorite book?” His question was perfunctory, just this side of polite.
“The Oxford English Dictionary.” She was too shy to tell him that the last time the same question had been asked, she was a finalist in the Freshman Beauty Pageant. It was one of the rituals of attending college, and an occasion for the seniors to tease the newcomers as they walked across the stage. Afterwards, her classmates congratulated her on the clever answer, making her wonder whether she had won more for her brains than her looks.
Leila had hoped to impress him with her answer. When he didn’t respond, embarrassment quickened her pace. White rose bushes had encroached upon the dirt pathway, narrowing it to the width of one walker. She gathered her saree folds close, so the silk wouldn’t get caught in the thorns.
“Minngaaoo.”
She stopped. Under a trellis of green leaves was a thin, clock-eyed kitten. Leila kneeled down immediately and began calling to it. The calico turned its gramophone ear toward her voice, but started a backward, on pointe, walk. She reached toward it, her fingers signing there was no reason for it to be afraid. “Come here,” she whispered. But in its short life the kitten had learned not to trust people and ran away.
Leila watched the reddish-black fur disappear and straightened up from her crouch. But something stayed her and she almost fell to the ground. Her pallao. She hadn’t wrapped it around her when she leaned toward the kitten and now the end was spread across the rose bush, an army of thin thorns marching through the blue silk.
She could hear Neel breathing behind her as she tried to l
ift off the material. But her hands couldn’t reach that far to the left and she stood still. Should she ask him for help?
“Here, let me do it.” Neel wanted to yank it off the bush. He stepped closer and her bare midriff pressed into his arm. Her waist was so slender his hands could span it and then some. The pallao wasn’t shielding her blouse and he could see her upturned, pointed breasts. She had a figure like the sculptures of Indian women in temples, with big and small curves in all the right places. He had always thought the ancient sculptors had vivid imaginations; no woman could have that kind of a body.
His hand moved toward her. He was just about to touch her when he jerked his arm away, a thorn piercing his finger.
“Did you get hurt?”
“Nothing serious.” He sucked the drop of red that shimmered on his skin in a viscous dance. What was he thinking? Thank God she hadn’t been able to see anything. He took a quick step back and this time concentrated on freeing the silk.
THAT NIGHT, THEY ATE AT THE restaurant in the hotel. It was small and dark, with oversized menus featuring oversized prices. It was also full and they were lucky to get a table.
“Do you know what you would like?” Neel asked, taking his sunglasses off for the first time that day and settling deeper into the corner seat he had deliberately chosen. He wanted to get the meal over with as soon as possible. He was feeling more and more uncomfortable with her. It wasn’t anything in particular. It was just that she was there, beside him, in his face, as Caroline used to say of the patients who annoyed her. So far they had found nothing to talk about, as if every topic had a built-in virus that killed discussion.
“Yes.” Leila scanned the menu desperately. These were the foods Mills & Boon heroines ordered when eating with their lovers. Spaghetti in Bolognese sauce, veal cacciatore, pasta primavera. Thankfully, the menu became Indian: tandoori chicken, curried prawns, pork vindaaloo, but that still didn’t help a vegetarian. At the bottom she found chana batura and ordered it.
“One chana batura for the lady?” Leila wondered if the waiter was being snide or if she was imagining a tone in his voice. It was amazing how Indians scorned those Indians who were not cognizant of Western ways.
“Sir, what can I get you?”
“I’ll have the Beef Stroganoff with a salad, oil and vinegar dressing, light on the oil, please.”
Leila was as mystified as if Neel had spoken another language. Unused to his accent and words, she only understood that he had ordered beef. He ate beef. Leila knew that many Indians, even Iyengars, were no longer strict vegetarians. Amma cooked eggs and they all drank milk. She was getting used to some of her friends eating chicken, but no one she knew ate beef.
She was just about to ask if he also ate pork and mutton when the couple at the next table greeted them.
Neel had noticed the two foreigners when they entered the restaurant and immediately wondered where they were from.
Leila had only seen foreigners from afar, and now this couple was sitting so close she could see the blue veins on their arms. The man with his dark hair and eyes looked like a fair Indian, except that no Indian she knew would go out to a fancy restaurant in a crumpled shirt. The woman’s hair was cut short like a boy’s, and her face was white, with dark spots all over it. Freckles, Leila realized, and wondered why so many books said they were cute.
Neel soon found common ground with the American couple. He felt revived. Cynthia and Harold were familiar. He treated people like them every day. Stood behind their carts at the grocery store. Sped past their cars on the freeways. They were part of his life in a way Leila wasn’t.
At the same time he felt the stirrings of the exact feeling he had experienced the first time he saw Mark’s mother with her unfamiliar violet eyes, and from that initial moment had wanted to impress the woman with the white, mysterious face. He never reacted this way to Indian women. They were easy to figure out and posed no challenge. Now, too, that force took over and Neel felt compelled to impress Cynthia.
Leila had never heard Neel speak so much. He was full of information for the couple, who had vacationed in San Francisco a few years earlier. Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, Sausalito, talk of her future home swirled around her. “Did you know Alcatraz means ‘pelican’ in Spanish?”
“We must be boring you,” Cynthia said to Leila as they paused while the waiter brought the food.
“No, no, I’m enjoying hearing you. Really, I’m learning a lot.”
Their eyes were on Leila. She was uncomfortably aware that they had picked up their forks and knives. She had never eaten chana batura with anything but her fingers. At home they used spoons only for ice cream or payasam, the coconut milk pudding Amma made for birthdays and festivals. Her hands were on the spoon when she remembered Josephine, the Anglo-Indian teacher, telling them how she had eaten an entire meal with a fork and spoon. Since such utensils were not in anyone’s kitchen, the teachers had merely said, “Wow,” impressed with her ability. “You don’t understand,” she had gone on. “A fork and spoon. I was supposed to eat with a fork and a knife. Ever tried to cut meat with a spoon?” Now Leila reached for the stainless-steel fork and knife, trying to make it look like she had used them all her life.
“I just love your saree,” Cynthia said. “Isn’t it gorgeous, Harold?”
“Yes it is. Why don’t we get you one, honey?”
Cynthia pointed to the small red pottu Leila had pasted on that morning. She had begun wearing them when she got her first monthly and would only stop if she became a widow.
“Is it a decoration or is there some religious significance?” she asked Leila.
“Some people say it represents the third eye of Shiva, and others—” Leila stopped when she heard Neel.
“That’s just old people talk. It’s all a moneymaking device. Gimmicky. They started out with plain red dots and now you can get them in any color and shape.”
“I think Cyn would look lovely in a bright purple one.” Harold stroked her cheek and then covered her hand with his.
Leila noticed he could not stop touching Cynthia.
“Are you also…that is to say, you are on your honeymoon?” Leila asked, sure of the answer.
Their laughter was unexpected. “No, we’re not married,” Cynthia said. “But we’ve been living together for years.”
Leila stared at Cynthia. No one she knew would ever confess to such behavior, but then, no good girl would sleep with a man outside of marriage. She kept staring at the other woman, as if immorality were as visible as a pottu. But aside from the tight dress that showed her nipples, Cynthia didn’t look different from other women.
“I’d like to get married,” Harold said. “Cyn’s the one who is still making up her mind.”
Cynthia said, “It pays to be careful. No matter what anyone says, women lose if things don’t work out.”
“Cyn’s a feminist.” Harold raised his wineglass. “And long may she reign.”
“I take it you two are married,” Cynthia said.
“Yes, ma’am, we are.” Neel’s voice was forcefully jovial. “I am a taken man.”
“Was it an arranged marriage?” Cynthia asked. “We’ve heard of them, but do they still happen?”
Neel immediately felt like the two-headed snake he had read about in the Steinhart Aquarium. How many moments like these awaited him in San Francisco? It was bad enough to have an arranged marriage. But it was almost more humiliating to have to explain it to Americans.
“Aren’t all marriages arranged in heaven?” he joked.
“Well, tell us, was your marriage arranged?” Cynthia asked again.
“From across a crowded room,” Neel began after a brief pause. He had to make up a story. “She was pouring tea, looking very serene and domestic. I glanced up at her and couldn’t take my eyes away. I don’t think she noticed me.” He laughed. “Anyway, before the first cuppa was cold, bam! That was it.”
“Love at first sight.” Cynthia sighed. “How marvelous. Did
you also fall in love right away?” she asked Leila.
“Probably not,” Neel said quickly. “But she’s not about to say that in front of me.” He smiled at Leila.
Leila’s lips widened in response as their faces mirrored each other. It was like the line from Donne’s poem: Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread/Our eyes upon one double string. She had always taught her students that it was a painful image. It wasn’t, she wanted to tell them. It was an erotic joining, a very visible coming together without physically being together.
Neel hoped she didn’t think he was serious. My God, even she couldn’t be that naive.
“You are one lucky man, Neel. Your wife is a knockout.” Harold turned toward Leila. “I think Indian women are gorgeous. Their eyes. Their skin. Their hair, hmmm. I love the way you talk, it’s so musical.”
Leila wasn’t sure how to respond. Indians never made personal remarks, unless the woman had chosen a public career such as a model or an actress. She looked down, inwardly pleased, unable to stop smiling. That her speech was musical confused her. She knew she didn’t sing well. In school the music teacher used to give her a passing mark without letting her sing. What could Harold mean?
“I think Harold wanted to come to India just to see the women,” Cynthia said, laughing. “We almost didn’t get here. It was a major pain to get a visa. You would have thought we were planning to steal the Taj Mahal, the trouble they gave us at the Indian Consulate.”
“And people told us it’s difficult getting to America,” Harold said indignantly.
Neel didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation. He wanted to reach across the table and kiss this woman with the broad Baltimore accent. She had shown him an exit on the dangerous slope he was speeding down with no hope of getting off. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself.
And the best part was he could blame America. The United States was making it almost impossible for Indians to get visas. It affected everyone: students who had received full scholarships, tourists, even brides. The visa problem wasn’t just a loophole, it was a giant void that would bury Leila forever in India. Even Aunty Vimla, the Great Aunty of Interference, wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.