“Don’t—ever—hit—her—again!” Tariq gasped.
Bright swatches of color pulsed in and out of Mangalam’s vision. He thought he saw Malathi beating her fists on Tariq’s back, yanking Tariq’s hair, trying to get him off Mangalam. Would the world never cease to surprise him? He heard someone—it was the girl with the broken arm—crying, “Stop! What’s wrong with you? God! You’ve all turned into savages!” Somewhere in the back, the grandmother was keening. He didn’t understand the Chinese words, but he knew it was a chant for the dead. Where was the soldier? What was the soldier’s name? The pressure on his throat made him forget. If Mangalam could only have called his name, the soldier would come. The ancient words fell, covering him, soft (he thought) as snow. When he’d been given this chance to start over in America, he had hoped to see snow, to lift his face to the swirl of flakes as he’d observed people doing in foreign movies. He had been disappointed to learn that snow almost never fell in this part of the country. That was his last thought before the colors pulsing in his eyes were suddenly switched off.
6
Uma lay on a row of three chairs, using her backpack as a pillow. A sharp edge from inside the pack poked her neck; she suspected it to be her Chaucer. The pain was on its way back—she could feel its early forays in her bones. She shivered. The heating system had been broken for—was it thirty-six hours now? The room had grown very cold, and it didn’t help that water had seeped into her shoes.
She longed to remember something beautiful and warm, and what came to her was a summer walk she had taken in the hills with Ramon. But before she could recollect anything more than a sloping trail of slippery orange gravel and a wicker basket filled with picnic supplies, a commotion rose in the room.
She heard voices raised in protest and the unmistakable sound of a slap. Had they gone mad? Didn’t they remember their precarious situation? Lily ran past her. In the shaky ray of the flashlight, which Cameron had turned toward the quarrel, she saw Mangalam fling the teenager to the ground with a thwack and Tariq launch himself at Mangalam. Plaster drizzled from the broken ceiling in protest, and her throat constricted with terror. But consumed by their passions, the two men were oblivious of the danger in which they placed the entire company.
When Cameron hurried toward the melee, Uma followed. She was worried about him: after digging Tariq out, he had coughed until he was forced to use his inhaler again. She also realized that she had forgotten to warn Cameron of Tariq’s threat.
I’m going to kill him.
It was as she feared. When Cameron tried to pry Tariq’s hands from Mangalam’s throat, Tariq punched him hard. Blood gushed from Cameron’s nose. Malathi was sobbing, pulling at Tariq’s hair. Tariq swatted her away. For some reason, Cameron wouldn’t hit Tariq back (Uma was sure he could have knocked him out again) but tried to grab his arms. Tariq’s eyes were crazed. He butted Cameron hard with his head and Cameron reeled back, gasping. It was like their very own Lord of the Flies! Uma couldn’t let it go on. She jumped into the fray, though she was terribly afraid for her broken arm, and caught Tariq’s shoulder. He turned, swinging, before he saw who it was. His fist hit her upper arm—her good arm, thank God. Still, she fell with a cry of pain. Perhaps that fall did some good because Tariq was startled into lowering his fists long enough for Cameron and Mr. Pritchett to catch him by the arms. He lunged at them, his mouth a snarl. But Lily added her efforts to the men’s, whispering fiercely into Tariq’s ear words that no one else could decipher, until he went limp and allowed her to lead him away.
THEY WERE SITTING CLOSE TOGETHER (CAMERON HAD INSISTED on it), trading distrustful glances in the half-dark. The larger flashlight had fallen to the ground. Cameron let it lie there. He was wheezing. He wiped his nose on his shirt, but the blood kept coming. This propelled Uma to stand up. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, only that she needed to say something. For a moment her heart pounded. She had never liked speaking in front of a crowd. Even the lectures she had to give as a teaching assistant, with carefully prepared notes and jokes she had practiced in the bathroom mirror, had made her nervous. Then an ironic calm descended on her. Only a few things mattered when you were about to die, and what people thought of your speaking abilities was not one of them.
“Folks,” she began, “we’re in a bad situation. It looks like the earthquake was a serious one. We don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here. I’m scared, and I guess you are, too.”
She could see that no one wanted to listen. Mrs. Pritchett turned her face away. Mangalam was busy massaging his neck. Tariq had shut his eyes again. Malathi worried the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Lily, who was stuffing Cameron’s nostrils with clumps of Kleenex, scowled at her.
But she had to go on. “Unless we’re careful, things will get a lot worse. We can take out our stress on one another—like what just happened—and maybe get buried alive. Or we can focus our minds on something compelling—”
“Like what?” Mr. Pritchett said. “It’s not like we have cable TV down here.”
Uma refused to let him annoy her. An idea was taking shape in her mind. With a little burst of excitement, because she sensed the power behind it, she said, “We can each tell an important story from our lives.”
Mr. Pritchett looked offended. “This is no time for games.”
Mangalam grunted in agreement. Malathi crossed stubborn arms over her chest.
“It’s not a game,” Uma said. She hugged her backpack, wanting to tell them how powerful stories could be. But they were staring at her as though she were half-witted.
“What if we don’t have a story to tell?” Mrs. Pritchett asked, sounding anxious.
“Everyone has a story,” said Uma, relieved that one of them was considering the idea. “I don’t believe anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.” A shiver came over her as she said the last words, a blurry déjà vu. Where had she heard the phrase before?
“You don’t know my life,” Mrs. Pritchett said.
“I’ve never told a story,” Mangalam announced flatly. His tone indicated that he wasn’t going to start now.
“It’s not difficult,” Uma said. “I’m sure you remember the stories your parents told you when you were little.” But at the mention of his parents, a shuttered look came over Mangalam’s face.
“I’m not good at explaining,” Malathi said. She looked unconvinced when Uma promised to help her find the right words.
“What if no one likes my story?” That was Lily.
Though Uma assured her they would love it, she shook her head and busied herself with rummaging in her backpack.
Tariq opened his eyes and glared at Uma. “Did you consider that we might not want everyone to know our business?” Before she could think of a rejoinder, he shut his eyes again.
One volunteer, Uma thought in desperation. That was all she needed. But even Cameron, whom she had counted on, was examining the lines on his palm.
Then she heard a voice, quavery, speaking English with a rusty Indian accent.
“I will be first.”
It was Jiang. They stared at her with varying degrees of incredulity.
“Gramma,” Lily began, “You can’t even speak English.”
Jiang blinked in the ray from the flashlight that Cameron had trained on her. Uma thought an impish expression flickered over her face. Had the old woman pretended, all these years, not to know the language of America?
Jiang said, “I am ready. I will tell my tale.”
THE RULES UMA SET DOWN WERE SIMPLE: NO INTERRUPTIONS, no questions, and no recriminations, especially by family members. Between stories, they would take breaks as needed.
They arranged the chairs into a circle. Malathi came out with a tin of Kool-Aid fruit punch. (Where had she hidden it? What else was she hiding?) She mixed it into the bowls of water sitting on the counter, placed the bowls on a tray, and served them as though she were the hostess at a party. The sugar made people more cheerful, tho
ugh Uma guessed it would ultimately make them feel worse. Oh, well! Carpe diem. Cameron switched off both flashlights. But in spite of the claustrophobic dark that fell on them, Uma sensed a new alertness in her companions, a shrugging off of things they couldn’t control. They were ready to listen to one another. No, they were ready to listen to the story, which is sometimes greater than the person who speaks it.
“WHEN I WAS A CHILD,” JIANG BEGAN, “I LIVED INSIDE A SECRET.”
From outside her house, in the narrow alley lined with the smelly gutters typical of Calcutta’s Chinatown, an observer would have seen the ugly, square front of a building, windowless and muddy red like its neighbors. In the center of this façade was a low, narrow door of cheap wood, painted green. The door opened only a few times each day—for the children, who walked a few blocks to the Chinese Christian school, or for the father, who was picked up for work by the monthly taxi he shared with two other Chinese businessmen. Sometimes in the afternoon the grandmother might undertake a visit by rickshaw to her friends, all of whom lived within a mile of the house. Or a guest would arrive unexpectedly, causing a flurry of excitement and a dispatching of the cook to the market for bean cakes or fresh lychees. Should the observer have peered into the interior of the house, he would have seen only another brick wall—the spirit wall, built for the express purpose of deflecting the outsider’s gaze.
“But no one ever looked,” Jiang said. “No one gave the Chinese any thought—not until much later. Indians considered us below them because many of us were in the tannery business or owned leathergoods stores. That was okay with us. We had our own people, and we got from them everything we needed.”
Had the observer walked through the door and around the spirit wall though, he would have been astonished. Inside was a large and beautiful courtyard, the heart around which the rest of the house was structured, its windows and balconies looking down benignly on mango trees and roses. At the courtyard’s center, a fountain rose and fell. Parties were held here on full moon nights, with much drinking of wine and reciting of poetry, while children played catch around the sculpted lions.
Jiang and her brother never spoke about the courtyard—or about the other parts of the house. The banquet hall with the carved rosewood table that could seat twenty-four people. Their father’s bedroom, which had a large photograph of their dead mother and was still hung with the silks she had chosen as a bride, embroidered with herons and good-luck koi. His study with the antique calligraphy scrolls he loved to collect. The hidden safe in which, because he didn’t quite trust the banks, he kept gold coins, their mother’s jade and pearl jewelry, stacks of rupees, and important documents (all except one, which he would later realize was the most important). There was no reason to tell the other Chinese of these things. They already knew, and many of the children’s friends’ houses mirrored theirs. And as for the non-Chinese—the ghosts, as they were called—the children were taught from the beginning to stay away from them. To keep family secrets safe.
“I would be the first in our family to break this taboo,” Jiang said.
IT IS AN EARLY SPRING DAY IN 1962 IN CALCUTTA AND JIANG, twenty-five years old, stands in the doorway of her father’s shoe store inside New Market, under the sign that reads feng’s fine footwear. She is proud of the sign, of which she is the author. That sign had led to some heated arguments, her grandmother claiming that such an arrogant declaration would attract bad luck. Look at the other Chinese businesses with their noncommittal nomenclatures: lucky orchid, jade mountain, flying dragon. None of them draw attention to their family name by blazoning it over their storefront. But her father had taken Jiang’s side, the way he had ever since her mother had died when Jiang was five, leading her grandmother to lament that he was nothing but a soggy noodle in his daughter’s hands.
Secretly, Jiang admits that her grandmother is right. And thank God for it, because otherwise Jiang would not be standing inside Feng’s, breathing in the smell of shoe leather, which is her favorite smell in all the world. She would be married off like her classmates, toting babies on her hip. Instead, she manages the family business, in which her older brother Vincent, a dentist with a spacious office off Dharmatala Street, has shown no interest. Though he is too loyal to the family to say such a thing, Jiang suspects that he looks down on shopkeeping.
And that is just fine with Jiang, who loves every aspect of her work. She opens the store each morning so her father, whose gouty leg has been bothering him, can sleep in. She decides which designs to order. She checks the quality of the work sent in by the shoemakers and ruthlessly sends back pieces that do not meet her stringent standards. She visits every convent school in Calcutta and speaks to the appropriate personages so that their students will be directed here to purchase uniform shoes. (The priests and nuns are happy to recommend Feng’s. The quality is excellent, and it doesn’t hurt that Feng’s provides the holy ones with free footwear.) She haggles ruthlessly with the men from the Chinese tanneries in Tangra, squatting over the leather samples they have brought in. She quells, with a single glance (as she is doing now) the two salesgirls who have a tendency to dissolve into giggles at the slightest cause.
The cause, this time, is a young man who is approaching the store. Jiang notes that he is taller than the average Indian and clean-shaven, unlike the usual scruffy Bengali male who operates under the delusion that beards are the emblems of intellectualism. His blue shirt is crisply ironed, but his sleeves are rolled up. This gives him a holidaying look that Jiang finds surprisingly attractive, perhaps because her father and brother, both formal men, would never do something like that. She decides to attend to him herself and dismisses the disappointed salesgirls with a flick of her wrist.
The man is accompanied by a wide-eyed girl of about fourteen, who clearly adores him. Jiang guesses her to be his younger sister. Just as they enter the store, he bends and whispers something funny in her ear—or is it that the girl finds everything he says funny? She bursts into laughter, then claps a self-conscious palm over her mouth. The man pulls it away. “Stop that, Meena!” he says. “It’s okay to laugh!”
Jiang is struck by his words. Has anyone in her family ever encouraged her to abandon herself to laughter? Even her father, who loves her dearly, is a cautious man. Letting her work in the store is probably the riskiest act he has undertaken in his life. And this is a temporary recklessness, because sooner or later Jiang’s grandmother will wear him down into setting up a match for Jiang. As for her brother—Jiang pictures him in his starched white shirt and face mask (to keep out germs and the ubiquitous fishy odor that he insists pervades Bengali mouths) as he bends gingerly toward a patient. A sigh escapes her and she feels a twinge of jealousy toward the girl. Then the businesswoman in her takes over. A caring brother such as this man, she thinks, would buy high-quality shoes for his sister rather than look for a bargain.
As she expects, they are here to buy uniform shoes. For Loreto House, which is the poshest of the convent schools in Calcutta. The girl moves to the foot measurement stool, but already Jiang has called out to the salesgirl to bring A-22 and 23, and C-601 and 602, in youth size 3, narrow. Four pairs of shoes arrive, two black and primly laced for schooldays, two white with tiny silver buckles for holy days. They fit perfectly. The sister offers Jiang an awed glance, and even the young man is impressed. He chooses A-23 and C-602, which are the more expensive designs, and then as Jiang is about to lead them to the sales register, he tells her that he would like to buy another pair for Meena. Her first set of high heels. Would Jiang be so kind as to pick out something suitable, since she has such fine taste? Here he glances at her feet, at the elegant square heels she is wearing, their dark blue leather a perfect match for her pencil skirt. But his glance does not stop there. It flickers (but not disrespectfully, she decides) over the skirt, which shows off Jiang’s trim figure to advantage, over the lace blouse with the tiny puff sleeves, over her neck, her chin, her mouth, and comes to rest on her eyes.
Jian
g is not totally inexperienced with men. She has attended numerous socials sponsored by the China Club, where she has had occasion to fend off dozens of ardent would-be suitors. But today, as she calls out for L-66 and P-24, in beige and dark brown, she finds that her throat is dry. Meena tries on the shoes; Jiang recommends the P-24 in brown; the brother declares that it is the perfect choice.
While a delighted Meena takes a wobbly walk around the store in her grown-up footwear, her brother hands Jiang his card. Jiang has never known a man who carries a card. She looks down at the white rectangle in her hand—how heavy, how smooth—to find that his name is Mohit Das, and that he is a manager—at such a young age!—at National and Grindlays Bank. He is thanking her for being so helpful; he is asking if she would like to go to Firpo’s with him after work tomorrow for coffee and dessert; he is asking for her phone number; he is asking her name. Jiang? he says. In his mouth it sounds elegant, more exotic than she could ever have imagined herself to be. At the end of the corridor, he turns to wave. Everything has happened so fast that she is almost too stunned to wave back. But she manages. She raises her hand—still holding his card—and smiles.
Thinking back on those days, Jiang will most remember the food. The delicate flavor of marzipan and petits fours on her tongue. And later, crisp moghlai parathas eaten in tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you could sit safely in a “family cabin” curtained off from the other diners. When they grew bolder, there were clandestine coffees and steamy vegetable cutlets among students at the Coffee House on College Street, and crisped-rice-and-potato chaat bought from street vendors because he wanted her to learn what real Bengalis loved to eat. The streetside snacks were so pungent that they made her eyes water, but even as she dabbed at her face with Mohit’s handkerchief, she had to admit the taste was worth every tear.
One Amazing Thing Page 7