“You know that suspension is impossible, Mr. Singh. You have only one option and that is to come to the hearing in Toronto and defend yourself.”
“And if I don’t come? Then you cannot proceed with your hearing.”
“If you don’t come, we proceed with the hearing in your absence—but in the presence, I assure you, of the city’s media. If you are not here to defend yourself, it is certain that you will be disbarred.”
twelve
can you forgive her?
I put down the receiver. With Dr. K. S. Sundaresan serving as lay bencher, I did not doubt the outcome of the disciplinary panel. I longed to phone Esther. Having come closer than any other woman to being my wife, she would offer me the counsel I needed—provided her job, her husband, and her children allowed her to do so. I suspected she would tell me that I must fight this. I must struggle. I must launch a campaign denouncing the charges against me as racism, as a vast right-wing conspiracy against the crusading southwestern Ontario lawyer, and enlist my literary allies to sign open letters. I must up the ante and go on television to denounce my persecutors. The mere thought exhausted me.
The indignity of struggle would disturb my quest for tranquillity. These were the tactics of a rabble-rouser. I aspired to a serene dignity, to the calm of the drawing room, where a gentleman could confer in peace with other men of his rank. To fray my Victorian remove from the vulgar toil of the street in order to save my position was no salvation at all. I would save myself by continuing to be the person I wished to be.
Only once in my life had I exerted myself, and that was at law school. I had been younger then, I had been willing to take desperate remedies to escape the towers beyond the end of the subway line, and, after the first few weeks, Esther had been at my side. As I picked my way down the outdoor staircase, I recognized, against my will, that it was my insistence on being the person whom I wished to be and no one else that had landed me in this fix. A man who gloried less in the pomp and circumstance of being R. U. Singh would have made the effort to go through his mail upon his return from speaking engagements and panel discussions. He would have put in the arduous late-night hours of work that were necessary to complete the perfunctory legal chores for which he had been contracted by the likes of Gita Kidambi. Rather than idealizing his connection to Milly as a dream that could go on forever, and refusing to sully it with a sordid separation agreement, he would have been realistic enough to grasp that the only thing that mattered when one had a friend as powerful as Millicent Crowe was to continue, at all costs, to be her friend, and to do her all the favours she requested. I had been blind and foolish. Yet, as with my turban, this was my blindness, my foolishness. Exhaustion drained me. I clung to the metal railing like an old man.
I opened the door of the bakery café. It was before ten o’clock. The day’s crop of tourists had not yet arrived from Toronto; only locals sat at the tables. I was glad to see that the professor was not among them. As I stepped in the door, the café went silent. The girl behind the counter—she was married now, with a ring on her finger—pressed her lips together in a smile that grew long and stiff. I bowed my head and shuffled among the newspapers on the tables, looking in vain for the previous day’s Toronto Star.
I approached the counter. The girl leaned forward, whispering. “Don’t worry, Mr. Singh. As soon as I saw that article, I pulled that section of the paper off the tables.”
“Do you still have it? You see, I haven’t read it.”
She looked pained. “I’ll see if I can find it.”
She returned looking abashed, waved me to a vacant table in the protective shadow of the counter, and brought me a coffee without my having ordered one. As soon as I read the article, I understood why those parts of my life that I had assumed to be private were now public.
Accusations of malpractice and misappropriation of funds swirled around the southwestern Ontario lawyer R. U. Singh yesterday as he faced allegations of professional misconduct from two of his clients, one of them a prominent university administrator. Ms. Gita Kidambi of Kitchener, Ont., and Dr. Millicent Crowe, recently named President of the University of South Saskatchewan … According to reliable sources, Mr. Singh, a noted champion of race relations, was due to receive the Order of Canada. It is understood that his name has been withdrawn from consideration.
I whimpered. I could not help myself. I kept my head down, concentrating on the page, aware that the other clients were observing every twitch of my hunched body. My secret marriage to Milly had been demolished in the most demeaning public way. Seeing my name linked in print with the Order of Canada confirmed our special, surreptitious relationship even as I was deprived of both the honour and Milly.
I got to my feet and, keeping my head lowered, left the café without finishing my coffee. I did not thank the young woman who had been so attentive to me. My mind was in an uproar. Who had done this? I could not believe that Milly had given this information to the Toronto Star. Had my procrastination over her separation agreement, my departure on my trip, caused her such grief? I had my doubts about the professor’s story that Milly had called the campus police to remove her husband; but if she had, her position would have been weakened by the absence of a separation agreement. The inconvenience would have irritated her, no doubt, but would the irritation have been great enough for her to betray our friendship? I could not believe that my village neighbour, the foundation of my cultured country life, was no longer mine, or that she had announced our breakup by publically striking my name from the list vof those under consideration for the Order of Canada. This sordid public debasement smacked of the machinations of Milly’s enemies. I suspected the scruffy professor himself of planting the information.
I climbed the stairs to my flat. My first thought was to call Milly’s real-estate agent. I knew the fellow, as one professional in a village is acquainted with another. He answered his phone on the first ring. Before I had time to think how best to phrase my query, I was stammering my name.
“R. U.!” the affable fellow said. “What can I do for you?”
“I am aware that you sold Millicent Crowe’s house. I’m waiting for some documents and a letter from her, but in the meantime I don’t have a current phone number. I was wondering—”
“All I’ve got is her office number. I figured if anybody had the home number, it would be you.”
“A temporary inconvenience,” I murmured, “due to the suddenness of her move. She’s sending me her new phone numbers with the documents.” My voice piped up, as thin and brave as that of a schoolboy who, in spite of knowing that the
master is skeptical of his story and may even cane him, decides to stick to it. Beneath my tremor, I heard the gulf of my longing and my need for Milly.
“Sure, R. U., I understand.” I feared that he understood too much. He gave me the phone number of the president’s office at the University of South Saskatchewan. I thanked him, hoping I did not sound excessively grateful. I walked around the flat and looked out the inland window that gave over the hill away from the river. The two-storey houses of red brick and washed-out limestone stared at me through their blank, squared-off windows, dim with knowledge of my humiliations. My breath trembled in my chest. I dialled the Saskatchewan area code, then the number.
“President’s Office,” said a voice, broader and more Western than those to which I had grown accustomed.
“I’d like to speak to Milly Crowe, please.”
“President Crowe is in a meeting. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice growing more resolute. “Please ask President Crowe to ring R. U. Singh, Attorney at Law.”
“Atturnawah? How do you spell that? Is that an Indian name?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re a member of the Cree band calling about the land claim, I have to tell you that the university is directing all communications from our legal team to yo
urs. Please stop harassing President Crowe. Have a good day—”
“I am not that sort of Indian,” I said in haste. “I am a friend of Milly’s from Ontario.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Ontario.” A suspicious pause. “How do you spell that name again?”
“Singh. S-i-n-g-h.”
“What sort of name is that?”
“Indian,” I said. “From India.” I felt myself slipping down an abyss. Racist poison, my daily bitter cordial during my years in Toronto, when on bad days it had seemed that my name was Paki, surged back. Not that this plague had gone away: I myself had simply ceased to be an object of disdain by ascending into a milieu where prejudice was displaced by the genteel desire to socialize with diversity. This woman’s belligerence was a foretaste of the disrespect that awaited me if I lost my privileges. The thought twisted the tourniquet of my unease one notch tighter.
I explained to the receptionist that “Attorney-at-Law” was my profession, not my name. I told her that Milly knew my phone number by heart, then gave it to her anyway. She informed me that if President Crowe wished to speak to me, I would receive a phone call from the president’s executive assistant to schedule my conversation with the president.
It did not sound promising.
I put down the receiver, longing for fresh air. I started towards the door, then stopped. Much as a walk along the river would do me good, I felt apprehensive about stepping outside. I tried to remember how many of my fellow villagers had seen me in the bakery café. Five? Six? If each of them related the incident to three or four people, and each of those people spoke to three or four others, the whole village would know of my disaster within hours. I would no longer stroll these streets as country squire but as cunning pariah. Why, why had Milly done this? I could not accept that she had renounced our tender, teasing friendship. Surely her decision to complain about my indolence to the Law Society of Upper Canada was a mere fit of pique whose consequences she had not foreseen. She did not, I told myself, know the legal world; she could not have calculated—
Yet if there was one ability in which Millicent Crowe excelled, it was calculation. She must have known that this accusation would destroy me. It must have been she, who had nominated me for the Order of Canada, who had also withdrawn my nomination. Who else but she could have alerted the newspaper? The selection process for the Order was confidential. No one but Milly could have provided this information to the Star.
Had our friendship meant nothing? How could moments as vital with companionship as our evening in Montreal leave no enduring residue? It made me question whether every experience of intimacy was not ultimately meaningless. I still chuckled at the memory of a man suggesting that my beard was false, that I was a woman in drag. In spite of being wrong, in his remark’s deeper implications, the man had been right. I was in drag: as a Sikh, as a Canadian, as a person of singular achievements. Milly and I shared the charade of playing the part of eminent people at festivals and conferences, yet neither of us had written eminent literary works like the guests at Milly’s long oak table. The man had been right, too, about the dynamics of our couple: practical Milly, in her slacks and pantsuits, incarnated the male principle; I, with my mooning over books, my scarves and flowing jackets, my conditioned lack of self-assertion, was the wife.
Milly had known this. She had known that if she hit me, I would not hit back. My worshipful adoration prevented it, as did my passive nature. All day I paced my flat, sipped wine, quailed at the thought of walking the streets beneath my neighbours’ eyes, and hoped against hope that I would receive a phone call informing me that President Crowe of the University of South Saskatchewan wished to schedule a conversation with me. The first time the phone rang, I jumped. It was a Toronto Star reporter. I refused to do an interview. I began vetting my calls. Most were mere annoyances from call centres in Lahore; there was no call from Milly.
I slept badly. In the morning, my mood worsened. I had barely dressed when I heard a knock on the door. When I opened it, the girl from the bakery café handed me a newspaper. Her eyes lowered, she said: “I’m giving this to you, Mr. Singh, instead of leaving it on the table.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry.” Without meeting my eyes, she turned away. Her steps, descending the stairs, punctuated the gush of the rapids.
I shut the door and returned to the kitchen. I drank a coffee and listened to the morning news. As long as I did not open the newspaper, the calamities it contained would not wound me; the life I had built remained intact.
Accepting for the first time that my comfortable life was imperilled, I yearned to savour it for a few minutes longer. At last I opened the newspaper. I reconciled myself to confronting more evidence that Milly was no longer on my side, even though I still could not believe that the woman I worshipped, who had given me my start, had undermined me.
The newspaper took me by surprise. A headline halfway down page seven of the front section read:
EMBATTLED LAWYER ACCUSED OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION.
Representatives of Toronto’s Hindu and Sikh communities joined forces yesterday to issue a declaration denouncing the southwestern Ontario lawyer R. U. Singh, a well-known figure in debates about multiculturalism. Mr. Singh is currently facing disciplinary action from the Law Society of Upper Canada on charges of professional misconduct and misappropriation of funds stemming from accusations that he failed to deliver legal services for which he had been contracted.
Now fresh accusations against Mr. Singh have surfaced.
The community organizations allege that Mr. Singh, who makes his public appearances wearing a Sikh turban, is, in fact, a Hindu.
“We know his family in India and they are all Hindus,” said T. N. Singh, speaking on behalf of Sikhs of Toronto. “It’s an insult to our faith for him to dress as one of us when he belongs to a different religion. What does he think this is—Halloween?”
Hindus, too, are furious with Mr. Singh, who they see as having abandoned his culture. “He is a traitor,” said Raj Patel, the Canadian representative for the Hindu nationalist party, BJP. “When we come to Canada, we leave our country but we do not leave our culture. It is the duty of every person to honour his true identity. Mr. Singh’s stunts have insulted Hindus all around the world. He owes it to his community, and to the family that raised him, to be authentic. When he comes to Toronto to be disciplined, we will be there to show him what we think of him.”
Professor Vikram Gupta, a specialist in South Asian politics at York University, explained that in India ...
K. S. Sundaresan, I thought, you are a fucking bastard! If only I could prove that he had compromised his partiality as a lay bencher! If I could pin this leak on him, I would sink his pathetic, upwardly mobile little career. I phoned the Law Society and shouted out my accusations. For once I was not passive. I took the initiative, as I had on the day that I first stepped into Milly’s garden.
“That man exceeded his authority,” I said, “and now he has divulged details of my private life to the newspapers! Your disciplinary hearing is null and void! Let me finish my work and then we will have our hearing. But we will have it without that treacherous son of a bitch K. S. Sundaresan! I demand that a different lay bencher be appointed.”
“Dr. Sundaresan,” a tombstone voice replied, “was appointed out of cultural sensitivity—”
“Fuck cultural sensitivity,” I said. “Can’t we just have culture?”
“That statement,” the man from the Law Society said, “is unworthy of a gentleman in your position.”
Was he referring to my status as an immigrant and a person of colour? This was an elite form of racism, no better than the University of South Saskatchewan telephone receptionist’s disdain. I hesitated. Yet perhaps he was right; perhaps I shouldn’t have said what I had. After all, I did want people to be culturally sensitive. I had built my life by fulfilling this yearning. I remonstrated that I would
not be able to attend my hearing because my personal security had been threatened by the Hindu fundamentalists of the BJP. Look at the morning paper, I said; it’s there in black and white. They’re going to try to get me.
“I read that article,” the implacable legal voice responded. “In a democracy, everyone has the right to peaceful protest. No one has threatened your physical security, Mr. Singh. I look forward to seeing you at the hearing.”
I had scarcely hung up the phone when the damned thing rang again. I did not answer it: not that day nor on any of the days that followed. I let the messages pile up until my inbox was full. I did not listen to the messages, or call anyone back. There was only one person I wanted to hear from, and I knew that she was not going to return my call.
thirteen
the woman in white
On the day of my hearing, I refused to get out of bed. If I got out of bed, I might get dressed. If I got dressed, I might get in my car and drive to Toronto. I was curious about the hearing and longed to denounce the lies that would be told against me. I wondered whether Milly would appear to present her testimony. No, I knew her well enough to be certain that she would not expose herself. If I went, I would not meet Milly; I would be surrounded by BJP fanatics denouncing me for having abandoned authentic Hinduism. I would have to watch Dr. K. S. Sundaresan smirk—I had never seen the man’s face, yet his voice told me that he would smirk—as he took infinite pleasure in snuffing out my career. A bottomless
blackness opened at my feet. This morning my career, my life, my public self—“the southwestern Ontario lawyer,” that externalized identity which, reversing its flow, had seeped into my intimate being to become the fibre of my existence—would be exterminated. I rolled over on my stomach and buried my head beneath the sheets. I lay inert for seconds, minutes, hours, impervious to the sunlight that angled over the lip of the ravine. I drifted in and out of consciousness. My unconscious moments felt more like a mystic’s trance, or the dazed incomprehension of a survivor of war, than ordinary sleep.
Mr. Singh Among the Fugitives Page 9