The Limits of the World

by Jennifer Acker

  Sunil would have to convince his family to take him to the old man, but now he forced himself to focus on the day ahead, outward instead of inward. To being here together. “You read Out of Africa, right?” he said to his wife.

  “I loved it.” Before they started dating, Sunil had not read much beyond the news, but Amy had begun reading stories aloud to him. She particularly liked Isaac Asimov, who appealed to her scientific side and was a favorite of her Russian grandfather’s.

  “Good. Today should be okay.” Reassurance meant as much for himself as for her. Because as they drove through the snarled lanes of cars, Sunil felt increasingly that he was returning to the scene of a crime. He kept remembering his childish infraction from half a lifetime ago, when they’d gone with Bimal and Mital Aunty to Mombasa and he’d run away to be fed by a stranger—Tom who knew of Magic Johnson—fistful of his mother’s money in hand. He still felt the shiver and tremble of their fight, which was at heart about their claims over each other, about power and obligation, and where had his father been in all this? Outside the fray, as usual.

  The stunt now pained Sunil. He would have stayed, kicked around a football, whatever would have drawn the boys toward some fraternal bond. Maybe Bimal could help him understand how on earth his mother had come to have a child here and give it to his uncle and aunt to raise. Until now, Sunil had lived his life as if his—and his parents’—past in this country did not exist. As a result, he didn’t understand this place any better than when he was fifteen. On the surface he could see that the city had transformed. The ration shops were now big grocery stores. Moonlit Chemists, where his mother used to buy a special skin-lightening face cream, had been swapped out for some chain.

  But the old Indian bazaar? Sunil had no memory of it. He didn’t know how the neighborhood where his family now lived fit into the old city or the new one.

  Worse, what he saw and heard didn’t line up with what he was told. Bimal aside, the old stories about intelligence and ambition pulling a whole community up out of the malarial mud—they were so vague and hyperbolic, Sunil couldn’t form a solid picture. To him Nairobi was just a polluted, corrupt, Third World city like dozens of others. Around the sightseeing, his family skirted each other edgily, with small talk.

  Into this booby trap, Sunil had brought Amy. She was determined to come, but he still felt selfish because he needed her so much.

  Amy scanned the traffic and the trees, vacantly knocking her knuckles against the window glass. “Do you notice how dawn and dusk happen instantly here? The sun just appears and disappears. There should be more warning.” He saw that she looked unnerved, tense.

  “No,” he said. “What else? Tell me.” What else did she see that he didn’t? What did her eyes discover and not forget?

  The women selling groundnuts in the road. The kids living in the backyard. Meena’s pretty accent. The sandstone Jain temple that was both humble and elegant. Dance music pumping from the matatus. “There’s a lot I think I’ll never forget.”

  Stalled at a light, they watched a flock of green-black birds on a sagging electric wire. “I can’t wait for the safari,” she said wistfully. If a flamingo should appear at their window right now she would jump on its back and fly away.

  This was something new, announced to them last night. His father had bought them a wedding present, a three-day safari in the Maasai Mara. Sunil knew it had been bought out of guilt, but it was still very generous. Amy was thrilled.

  “Privacy,” he said, in a low voice.

  “Sex,” she whispered and squeezed his thigh. “I mean, all the beautiful, wild animals.”

  They’d started kissing ferociously, scratching, taking off clothes, once in the past several days, but they’d been too embarrassed, too nervous about interruption. Amy took his hand now, but Sunil released it, indicating his father and the driver.

  The road started to rise, and more bushes and trees appeared. The sky grew closer.

  “We are beginning to enter the Highlands,” Premchand said. “There are no Indians here.”

  “None?” Sunil said.

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  Amy said, “Premchand, you told us when you came to the States, but you didn’t say why. Will you tell us?” Amy had stopped calling his father Doctor.

  His father paused for such a long time that Sunil thought he might be trying to remember himself, or perhaps he was forming a story because there wasn’t one.

  “In November of 1961,” Premchand said, “there was heavy flooding in Nairobi. Everyone was caught off guard, stranded at the hospital. It rained and rained and the rivers swelled. Patients arrived covered in mud, wet head to toe. During those three days I saw the hospital for what it really was.” Again he paused, slowly shaking his head. “People there treated it as a vacation, an excuse to take it easy, okay? They changed schedules, bent the rules. I couldn’t stand such laziness.”

  Here, in the car, watching the scenery change as they eased away from the tumbledown city into the wider, wealthier, greener spaces, it seemed shocking that his parents had moved across the world. His father’s immigration story was self-serving, but Sunil believed in it. There was something inflexible in his father; it would have been hard for him to accept conditions less than optimal. This was a virtue because it inspired ambition. It was also a failing: the inability, the refusal, to see things outside the idealized frame he’d constructed.

  Unlike many of his grad-school classmates, Sunil was not a seeker, someone who sought a grand unifying theory of the universe. Nor was he a debate-team champion out for blood, more interested in combat then ideas. Sunil wanted to understand not the greater workings of the universe but the logic of human beings. A business so much messier than he had naively expected.

  What questions would Sunil ask Bimal when they met again? He didn’t know yet, but he felt an urgency begin to swell inside him.

  Premchand cleared his throat and continued, “Some people say it was a big risk moving to USA. But I’d already learned how to be brave, how to defend myself by growing up in Nairobi.” He turned to look meaningfully at Sunil.

  This was unusual. His father had never been a storyteller. Was he performing for Amy? It seemed she and his father were beginning to take a shine to each other, which relieved and gratified Sunil. In contrast, standing next to his mother and exchanging small talk this morning was as close as the two women had gotten. Urmila didn’t come sightseeing with them, and she left few conversational spaces during meals. She seemed to disappear with Sarada during the empty afternoon hours when the older people napped and he and Amy lounged with books in the dim living room, or sat on plastic chairs catching sun in the backyard.

  There were some “bad types” where he’d grown up, Premchand now said. “Gangs, hoodlums, and one of these criminals had the name Big Tooth, because he lost most of his teeth in a fight. He was supposed to protect our little neighborhood, but he was also very jealous so any competition he had to snuff out.”

  “Dad, did you see this in a movie?”

  His father smiled. “It is the stuff of movies, I agree.” The weapon of Big Tooth was a big knife, he said—there were no guns, not like in America, or like Nairobi today. “We would see him walking the perimeter of the compound, tossing his blade, and I grew very curious. I shouted questions at him from behind the bushes. At first he didn’t mind because I wasn’t a threat, I was too little.

  “But I grew older and I asked him things—How did you lose your teeth? How many men have you killed?—and he got annoyed. It was a kind of joke because he called me Big Mouth—and he was Big Tooth, okay? But one day he got tired of my big mouth and sent some thugs to shut me up, not to hurt me, just send a message. These men were fierce, big arms and scars on their hands. They followed me menacingly. At first I was scared, but then I grew used to them. And so when we moved to USA I was never worried about the bad neighborhoods. Ask
your mother.”

  “You stood up to gangsters!” Amy let out a full, open-mouthed laugh.

  “Yes,” his father smiled. “A real tough guy.”

  “Dad, you never told me about your time as a crime fighter.”

  “I never thought of it. Being here has brought it all back.” He pointed out the window at a tree with corkscrew arms and leaves large as footballs. Beyond, in the distance, were blue hills nestled under the clouds. The light was golden and thick and hung all around them. “Look,” he said, “some things here are still beautiful. You hardly see views like this in America.”

  13.

  Perched at the end of a long drive, surrounded by palms, pointy trees, and trimmed hedges, the house was smaller than he expected. Red tile roof and white window frames. Very English. There was a long shaded porch where Premchand imagined colonials drinking their cocktails. Inside, the floors were dark, everything swept and shiny.

  “This is all from the movie,” Amy said, looking at the furniture and Chinese ceramics.

  “But they are in much better shape than the originals,” Premchand said. He pointed to a flattened animal skin. “This is real lion.”

  “Real,” Amy smiled, “but not the one Karen Blixen really stepped on.” She wore sneakers and khaki shorts, his wife’s brown sweater. Hair in a ponytail. She bounced lightly on her heels.

  “Do you suppose this was a man-eating lion?” Premchand said. When Sunil and Amy looked at him questioningly, he added, “You haven’t heard about them? They ate men like candy.”

  “Sounds like another tall tale, Dad. Those gangsters really pulled your leg.”

  Premchand smiled. He couldn’t remember where he had heard about the lions. Was it in the movie? He and Urmila had rented Out of Africa one night when Sunil was out with friends. Meryl Streep’s white suit and white hats, curly brown hair: Doesn’t it matter to you I’m another man’s wife? He couldn’t remember what Robert Redford had said in response, only the hazy yellow-green plain behind his head. The silly upswell of music that Urmila had thought romantic.

  Clouds slid over them and shaded the grassy expanse behind the house. Sunil squinted toward the horizon, and Premchand watched the way he moved gracefully through the museum, jaw pulled back in thought, arms crossed, then his hand on his wife’s arm, leaning into her ear, a flash of smile. The way his thumbs rubbed against each other when he clasped his hands behind his back. He felt he’d never witnessed his son’s life in this much color and detail. Premchand now saw this person, this being made from himself, the black stubble on Sunil’s face, with sudden clarity and curiosity. He was also seeing his son in love, his son married, intimate glimpses that he would likely not witness again for a long time.

  He tried to remember: who had been Sunil’s first girlfriend? It would have been during the period when Premchand was traveling, giving so many talks. He had little memory of home life then. That had been the high point of Premchand’s career. He missed talking to an audience. He also missed sticking his face behind a microscope, entering the tiniest of worlds. Helping patients was gratifying, but their suffering exhausted him.

  If he had been paying attention back then, years ago, he would have known Sunil wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. His son had found exam rooms claustrophobic and shied away from instruments and needles. He liked looking at things under the microscope, until he was told what they were—bacteria, amoeba, C. elegans. Premchand’s own absorption—his gratitude that medicine had given him a vocation and an escape—had made him lose sight of the fact that in America a child could grow up to be anything. He had not presented his son with any options. Premchand had not known himself what they were.

  Now he would follow the moments as they presented themselves. Each detail deserved his attention.

  Amy gestured with her camera at Premchand and Sunil, told them to stand against the dark-paneled fireplace for a snapshot. “Say, gastritis,” she said, laughing. “A public health joke, right, Premchand?” Then she headed outside to take more pictures. Premchand liked this small curious girl, her raucous joke, her outsized appetite. Around him, he noticed, Amy had begun to relax, choosing to sit next to him at dinner and ask questions about his practice in Columbus, where he treated a large number of international refugees. Premchand did not blame Amy for remaining quiet when the larger group of relatives gathered. He often felt ambushed when he spoke up, unless he had been careful to prepare a big voice and forceful line, which was usually too much effort. He had the feeling that his son wanted his wife to act with confidence, and Premchand was rooting for her, too. For them.

  After Amy went outside to take more pictures, Sunil said, “This museum. We never came here when I was a kid.”

  “Oh? What did you do during the summers?” He had missed this part of his son’s life, too.

  “We worked in the shop. We had foot races in the driveway, swam at the pool. I went with Bimal to a summer chemistry class. We exploded volcanoes and made borax snowflakes with pipe cleaners.” He paused for a moment. “Bimal was so enamored of it. But his crystals didn’t grow very well. I really lorded it over him. Then I gave him mine when I left. I just remembered that.

  “Those summers were hard, though. Mom was always embarrassed I couldn’t speak Gujarati.” He touched the wooden bedpost and the delicate glass shade of a lamp. “Why didn’t you ever come, Dad?” Sunil hovered next to the bed smothered in leopard skins. A pair of earth-colored pants and a white linen shirt hung on a closet door. But Sunil seemed to be only glancing at the objects; his gaze had turned inward, to the past, to his frustration. He now looked around and then impulsively stepped over the rope meant to keep visitors from brushing up against the artifacts. Premchand looked for a guard, but there was no one. He felt a rush—the prickling novelty of being alone with his son.

  “It was hard to get vacation time,” Premchand tried to explain. “I wanted to take you to the American things. Do you remember the Grand Canyon?”

  “Of course. You and I and Anup Uncle were the only ones brave enough to ride donkeys down to the bottom. We drove across country in that big van. Ajay Uncle lit the back seat on fire with his cigarette.”

  “Your uncle is a little careless.” Premchand moved closer to his son, but stayed behind the rope. “You know your mother wanted you to come here, very badly. She misses you.”

  Sunil crossed his arms and looked down at the leopards, then up at Premchand. He said, “The last week has been pretty long, you know. First telling Amy’s parents, now being here.”

  “They were unhappy with your news?” This was the first his son had said about their days in DC.

  They’d told the Kauffmans as soon as they arrived, Sunil said, all of them sitting in the backyard. “I remember staring hard at this bush beside me, I couldn’t focus on their faces.” At first, Ariel had blanched, but stayed quiet. Then she’d said, “Oh, honey,” as if her daughter were ill.

  “They were upset about the marriage outside of Judaism, but they covered it by saying they were offended that Monica, Amy’s sister, had been invited to the wedding—when they hadn’t even been told. But they were out of the country, and, well, we knew they’d be upset. Amy had decided she didn’t want them there—too complicated.” Sunil looked away from Premchand’s face and kept talking. “Monica tried to rescue us by focusing on Amy’s job search. Before we went to DC, she’d interviewed with three nonprofits in Boston. The interviews hadn’t gone as well as Amy had hoped—and Ariel made it worse. She interrogated every moment: Had Amy asked the right questions? Listened carefully? It was infuriating. Anyway, there was one place, the Welcome Group, she really likes. She’s hoping to get an offer from them.” Sunil paused. “The whole dinner was awful. A lot of silence. I could hear myself chew.”

  Premchand heard distant voices, but no one joined them in the whitewashed room. He waited for more.

  “Later, David, Amy’s father, started
asking all these questions about Nairobi. Ariel, too. I told them that I really didn’t know much or what to expect, but they kept asking. Questions I’d never thought of myself, about the older generation—dates—things I know nothing about, and somehow that made things better. It was like they needed to find a redeeming angle, something to feel good about, and they were excited for us that we were taking this trip. That Amy would meet everyone.” Sunil shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They went from being angry to being concerned, invested, so quickly. They were still hurt, but they were a family. We. Maybe we were a family.” Sunil pinched the bridge of his nose, as if pained, and looked at the parchment-yellow maps on the walls. Then he stepped back over the exhibition rope, to the visitors’ side, and gestured to his father to move on.

  “This is something good,” Premchand said. “They have accepted you, and they are Jewish, too.”

  “Dad, it’s not just that they’re Jewish. A lot of Jews are like Jon Samuel, your partner—secular and liberal. Isn’t he married to a Korean woman? Amy’s parents are much more conservative. They’re religious like born-again Christians. Anyway, yes, things seem to have healed a little with them, once the initial shock wore off. They weren’t going to decide Amy was dead to them.”

  At the wide bay of windows, they stood together and looked out at the ground where the coffee plantation used to be. A chattering European family joined them in the room. Next to the white people, and after a few days in the sun, Sunil was very brown. He was darker than Urmila or Premchand, than anyone in their families, and Urmila had been worried about this when he was a boy. Especially when Sunil came home with bruises on his arm, inflicted on the walk to their house from the bus stop. Still, Premchand had stubbornly maintained their son’s dark skin would not matter in USA like it would in Kenya or India. Premchand thought now that he had probably been wrong.