by Chaitali Sen
For a few months after that, Mariam was delicate with her father. She practiced civility and avoidance, but in that same period her father was often absent, more than usual, and she was certain he was seeing Elizabeth. Mariam couldn’t say where. She herself hadn’t set eyes on Elizabeth since she was a child, but somehow Elizabeth still permeated their lives. Her scent was still on him. He worked all the time and was sullen when he got home. Again Mariam found him unforgivable, but she was leaving soon for Mount Belet. In a matter of months, she and her father would be free of each other.
Now her father charged past Mariam’s question, still seizing a chance to tell her something different about Elizabeth. “She loved you very much, Mariam. She couldn’t bear the thought of you not having a father.”
“She sent you back, didn’t she? She shouldn’t have bothered.”
Her father placed the article on the edge of his desk for Mariam to take back. “I don’t remember her at all,” Mariam said as she took the article and threw it in the trash bin beside his desk. “I only remember what you were like when you were with her. I remember the two of you standing over me. Your arms were touching.”
Her father closed his eyes, remembering his lover while Mariam stood there. He looked old, his face lined with self-pity, and Mariam was tired. She was tried of watching her parents suffer each other.
“Do you still see her?” Mariam asked gently. On this, she only wanted the truth.
“I haven’t seen her in many years,” he said. “I gave her up.”
For you, Mariam thought. That was what he must have felt, that Mariam by her very existence was the source of his crushing unhappiness. A part of her wanted to say that she was sorry. If it were up to her, she would have rather seen him live truthfully, without losing anyone he loved. They would have all been better off that way, her mother included, but it was too late, wasn’t it? Elizabeth was lost to him, and if she said something careless, and her mother was abandoned again, Mariam would never forgive herself. All she could do was leave him alone.
She went down to the kitchen to see her mother.
“What’s happened between you?” Mama asked.
“Nothing,” Mariam said. “It isn’t for you to worry about.”
“I thought you were trying. You two break my heart.”
They all fell into a weary silence for the remainder of her holiday. She wanted it to end, but she thought of going back to Mount Belet and seeing John and Nina with equal dread.
On the day of her departure, her father drove them to the station and stayed in the car while Mariam and her mother waited on the platform. When the train arrived, her mother tried to hold her, but Mariam didn’t want to be held. She said goodbye without looking up and boarded the train, leaning her head against the window and closing her eyes as it pulled away, wishing never to go home again. She did not want to go anywhere she had ever been before.
THREE
She had three days without Nina and John. One afternoon she hiked down to the bottom of the gorge beneath the bridge, her hands scraping the rock walls and her feet slipping over ice and pebbles. People died along this path, one misstep throwing them into the frigid rapids below. The wind came in from the north, ripping through the canyon like a bullet train while the waterfalls, fed by melting snow, roared and tumbled into the gorge. She got to the bottom late in the day. Her feet were numb. She wedged her body into a crack in the rock wall, protecting herself from the wind and freezing mist rising from the rapids, and stared at the foaming water. She looked up at the bridge, a hundred meters up, and imagined herself standing over the railing, looking down. With the sun setting and her body stiff from cold and fatigue, she decided it was time to turn around and climb back up the steep path that brought her here. She emerged through the thicket onto the bridge after dark. No one would believe what she had done. She could hardly believe it herself.
On another day she went into town, where shops stretched along a wide avenue for five or six blocks. Her favorite was an old pawnshop, dark, woody and dusty. She could spend hours in there picking up tiny objects, little silver pillboxes, porcelain spoons and porcelain cups, jewelry and many things that seemed to have no use at all. There were shelves crowded with perfume bottles—from a distance they looked like the skyline of a miniature glass city. Under the glass countertop she saw something that looked like a pocket watch with an engraving that swirled from the edge of the circular cover to its center point. She kept going back to the counter to look at it, and finally the shopkeeper took it out for her. He opened it and showed her it was a mariner’s compass, not a pocket watch, and it was made of brass. She read the engraving. The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.
“That’s beautiful,” she exclaimed. “Is it from a poem?”
“The Prophet,” the old shopkeeper said proudly. “It’s an unusual piece. We’ve had it a long time.”
“Does it work?”
“I’m not sure. The needle moves, but whether it moves accurately I couldn’t say. If you like it I’ll give you a good deal.”
“How much do you want for it?”
The shopkeeper looked at her kindly. “Twenty-five?” he asked.
Perhaps he would let her put a down payment on it. “Can I have it for fifteen?” she asked.
He winced. “Twenty,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”
If she bought it, she’d have no money for bus fare, but she wanted the compass. “All right,” she said.
As he wrapped it he asked her if she was from Sulat.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“The girls from Sulat are the prettiest. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a girl from Sulat.”
Mariam smiled. She’d never received such a strange and sincere compliment.
By the time Nina returned Mariam was composed, feeling strong enough to handle her. Nina didn’t talk at all about John. In fact she was far less talkative than before the holidays. During the first week of classes, after Nina had tried to track him down, it was clear that John was avoiding them, both of them, and only Mariam knew why. He had come to her in the infirmary and kissed her on the lips. She knew this for certain now. Her memory was perfectly intact.
“Have you spoken to him? Have you seen him?” Nina asked.
Mariam shook her head.
“Did something happen? Isn’t it strange that you haven’t seen each other?”
“It isn’t strange,” Mariam said. “Why would you say that?”
“You were friends, weren’t you?”
“For a while, but then he met you.”
Nina looked confused. “What do you mean? You still saw him, after he met me.”
“No, not very much,” Mariam said. “Hardly at all. And over the break I only got a postcard from him.”
“He’s moody. I just can’t figure him out. One minute he seems so attentive and the next minute he seems to have completely forgotten about me.”
Mariam would not have characterized him in that way. He had forgotten her, yes, but before that he had only been attentive, before he met Nina and vanished.
“Why do you like him so much?” Mariam asked.
Thinking about it made Nina smile. “He’s cute. He’s funny.”
“That’s all?”
“He’s smart.”
“Yes, but he’s not very reliable, as you say.”
“You’re right, Mariam. I don’t think he’s very mature.”
“No,” Mariam agreed.
“It’s just that . . . I believe that he will love me one day.”
Mariam thought Nina’s confidence was foolish, but no more foolish than her own, she discovered, after Nina did catch hold of John in the days to come. She began to talk about him again, in the present tense, and then from the library window Mariam saw them together. They were walking, Nina sk
ipping next to him and talking animatedly about something. They stopped. Nina reached up and put her arms around his neck. She kissed him for a long time before they parted.
Mariam imagined them discussing the situation, wondering if they ought to talk to her about the seriousness of their relationship. It was more likely they had never discussed her at all. That Mariam had fallen away from John’s memory as though her very existence had been erased.
She’d chosen her classes poorly, struggling through each one in a different way, the worst being her philosophy class. She should have dropped it when she had the chance, but she found the professor so hypnotizing she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He was French, visiting for a year from the Sorbonne. He was dignified and handsome in an academic way, with a full head of gray hair and deep-set blue eyes, a blue that Mariam imagined was the color of a tropical sea. He stood close to the girls, looked at them directly and spoke to them in seductive tones, though he had a wife who was also teaching for a year in the French department. Mariam studied his interactions with the female students much more closely than she did the actual content of the course.
Before the first paper was due he asked the students to present their outlines to him privately. As Mariam sat across from him in his small office, she could hardly breathe. His presence filled the whole room. His lips twitched as he looked over her outline. “You want to write about existentialism and morality?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to speak, knowing her voice was lost to her. Finally she nodded her head.
“It’s a good outline. Do you want to talk through it?”
She shook her head. He stared at her, amused and perhaps flattered by her silence.
“You can speak English if it is easier for you.”
She stared at his knees. “I’m not finished with the outline,” she said in French.
“If your argument is that existentialism offers a new morality,” he continued, “I will expect you to define morality. I want your definition of morality, what it means to you. Not something copied. Did you understand me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You should speak up more in class. I’m sure you have things to say.” He looked back at her outline to remember her name. “Mariam,” he said, handing it back to her.
In class Mariam watched him with a girl who seemed to impress him with her comments, though her French was very bad. He called on her a lot, and sometimes their exchanges would last several minutes, as if they were dying to empty out the room so they could make love and talk about Sartre in whatever language suited them. Now during class Mariam’s head was full of questions. Would he wear his wedding ring while they made love? Have they been together already? Was the girl a virgin before? The girl was in love with him, that was obvious, but did he love her? What must it be like, to be so desired?
She couldn’t sleep and began to take long walks on the outskirts of campus until late into the night. It wasn’t safe to wander away from campus after midnight and for some girls it was never safe to walk alone, even on the college grounds, but no one ever seemed to notice Mariam. She was silent everywhere, even in her own room with Nina. If she didn’t call her mother she could go days without talking to anyone. Once, when she was about six years old, she had stopped talking altogether. Though it was only for a few weeks that silence had marked her for a long time. For reasons she couldn’t have understood yet, her mother had packed her a pink suitcase made just for traveling little girls, and Mariam remembered opening and closing it again and again just to hear the snap of its clasps. Then her father drove up, and her mother put Mariam and her suitcase in that car. Her mother told her she was going to spend the weekend with her father and Elizabeth, and even as Mariam got in the car she was so enthralled with her suitcase she didn’t think it odd that her father and Elizabeth would be someplace where her mother was not. It wasn’t until she was taken to Elizabeth’s flat and saw her father’s things there that she began to wonder about her mother. Her father put his arm around Elizabeth and said they were going to get married, that Elizabeth was going to become a kind of mother to her.
The six-year-old Mariam thought having Elizabeth as a mother meant her own mother had been eliminated. How could a child have two mothers? She was so shocked she couldn’t get any words out. Her father and Elizabeth asked her to say something. They waited a few minutes, then a few hours and a whole night, until the visit was deemed a failure and she was roughly handed back to her mother the next day. She should have spoken after she was in her mother’s arms, but she didn’t, not again until she saw her father walking up the front path one morning weeks later. She said, “Daddy’s here.” It seemed strange now that his return had hastened her speech. In every other way it was disastrous.
She remembered a feeling from that period that she was fading and fading and would disappear altogether, as if her voice was the only thing that made her visible. That feeling was creeping back to her now.
A boy was staring at her one night when she sat on a bench facing her dormitory window. She was waiting for the lights in the room to go out, so she would know Nina had left for dinner and Mariam could go in and try to sleep. She was exhausted and struggling to keep her thoughts straight. When she noticed the boy looking at her she threw her hand up in a limp wave, and after a slight hesitation, he came over and spoke to her.
“I know who you are,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”
She smiled, intrigued by his introduction. “No. How do you know who I am?”
“John Merchant is my lab partner. He used to spend time with you. I asked him to introduce us but he refused.”
“He refused? How curious.” She put her hand out. “And you are?”
“Vic. Vic Arora.”
“I like that name.”
He kissed her hand gallantly. “And what is your name? It must be something beautiful.”
“Mariam,” she said. It sounded like a different language when he repeated it.
“Would you like to get a drink?” he asked.
“Right now?”
“Yes, why not? You’ve been sitting here a long time. I’ve been watching you.”
She looked down, embarrassed by his observation.
He still had her hand and tugged at it.
“I suppose I could get one drink.”
He began walking immediately, pulling her along. With every step his pace quickened and Mariam had to run at times to keep up with him. He took her to a pub on a dark street she had never visited, just outside the campus walls. “This is the only place quiet on a Friday night.”
He sat her down at a sticky square table and brought her a glass of whiskey. There were no students here, only a few men slumped against the bar. She had only taken a few sips before Vic finished his drink and ordered them both another. He was restless, tapping his fingers on the table. Now that he’d gotten her off the bench, he couldn’t seem to make conversation. It didn’t take long for Mariam to realize there was something not right about him. She had never seen anyone so trapped in his own body. Her heart broke for him.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Wonderful,” he said.
“Are you having a good term? Do you enjoy your classes?”
“I love my classes. I feel wonderful in my classes.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re sweet,” he said. “You have a sweet face.”
“Can we go somewhere else?” she asked.
“Where did you want to go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere more comfortable.”
He looked at his watch. “We could go to my dorm. But John doesn’t usually get back to his room until around eleven.”
“Why would that matter?”
“I’m not an imbecile. You want him to see you, don’t you? You should hear him and that girl going at it. Really, I don’t k
now when that guy sleeps.”
Vic leaned forward in his seat, gripping the edges of the table like he was about to pick it up and throw it across the room. She could hear his foot tapping furiously under the table.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” he said, thrusting the idea forward like a sword, his Hamlet to her Polonius.
“It’s all right. I should go home.”
“I know a nice spot,” he said. “We can get it over with there and I’ll tell John about it later. Don’t worry. I’ll tell him.”
She forced the other drink down. “Are you talking about sex?”
“Of course I’m talking about sex.”
“You want to tell John that you had sex with me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”