He willed the cascading images to come to rest, but all he saw now was missed opportunity. And not just for himself but for Bimal. Because even though Sunil had been miserable, he still felt himself to have been given the better circumstances—how could he not think so when his parents themselves had decided to immigrate?—and rising before him was a blunt contrast between Columbus and what he’d seen of Nairobi. He had been able to get lost in America. His house and immigrant parents might have confined him, but the rest of the country always had felt wide and open, and that had been a gift. He said, “Growing up here, didn’t you feel constrained? The myth- making about Indian culture, doesn’t it drive you nuts? The self-congratulatory talk of money and business?” He began to wonder if one thing they had had in common was being outsiders: brown against black; brown against white. But Bimal was straining to push himself up and speak more forcefully than he could lying down.
“What myth?” Bimal said. His scar darkened to reddish purple, thick eyebrows drew together into a scowl. “Our grandparents really came here with nothing. Now look—Asians control the commerce. Is that what you mean? That’s history, not a myth.”
“Overall, sure, but the individual stories are all thin. The ones people remember and have told me, anyway. A couple of days ago I was asking what our grandfather did for work as a young man, and no one could tell me. It’s like how things are now is the only thing that matters. You have a good life, but someone else chose it for you. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Too many choices are a luxury.”
“Exactly!” But he shouldn’t have said so much. He had meant to be receptive, a listener, but he was so overcome by what he’d learned that whatever control he usually had, which was not much, had disappeared. Worse, he hadn’t said what he meant. He was trying to articulate to his brother what his own outsider perspective had shown him about Indian culture here: the survivor’s attitude of defiance, a protective layer that obscured the truth, like his mother’s face-lightening cream. He had mistakenly believed that Bimal would want to hear this. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I sound like a jerk. There’s been a lot to take in on this trip. I never know what’s going on, where the hell I am. You’re the first person telling me the truth.” Sunil pressed his temples to still the pulsing there. He stepped closer to Bimal’s bed. “Can I help you with those pillows?”
“No. Thanks.” Bimal’s tone was sharp and Sunil backed away. He stumbled and knocked over the metal folding chair, and the crash reverberated down his spine. Some trick of heat or light made the room sway.
He had to step outside, just for a moment. He needed to see his father’s reassuringly placid face. He mumbled quickly to Bimal that he needed to use the bathroom and would be right back.
But by the time he made it to the lawn, his father was gone. Sunil looked around, over the hedges toward the road. Cars, rusty air, low brick houses, palm trees, birds flitting across the bluing sky. He’d grown used to it, he realized. The traffic noise no longer bothered him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a wave from Prakash, but he quickly turned back and reentered the house. He and Bimal were not finished. He could not leave things the way they had just ended.
Sunil found his mother, Amy, Mital Aunty, and Sarada Aunty in the kitchen, surrounded by the makings of bhajias: chopped vegetables and a bowl of chickpea flour. All of the women had beige dustings on their cheeks. To the side was a stack of fashion magazines from India, open to various elaborate costumes. Sarada and his mother were chatting, mostly in Gujarati, while Amy silently mixed something in a bowl. There was something off about her expression, a terseness that was almost sullen. When she saw Sunil standing in the doorway, she quickly stood up and went to him.
“How’s Bimal? How did the bonding go?”
“He’s amazingly strong given what he’s been through.”
Amy opened her mouth to speak again, but closed it when she saw Sunil wasn’t finished.
“It was going well, then I think I messed up. I just need to spend a little bit more time with him.”
“We have a day here when we get back from the safari,” Amy offered. Her eyes were rimmed red, which he assumed was the onions—his own lids were beginning to smart.
Sunil shook his head. He couldn’t wait that long. “No, it needs to be now. I just stepped out for a minute to get some air.”
“But it’s been two hours already.” She looked at her watch, a plastic Swatch with a face that dwarfed her wrist. “Two and a half.”
“I know, but—well, that’s not all that long, considering all there is to talk about, right?”
“I thought we were going to go out with Meena.”
“We will, just a bit later. She isn’t here yet, is she?”
Amy shook her head, a repetitive movement that reminded him of his grandfather’s tremor. “Can you stay out here for just a few minutes?” she asked quietly. “I need you in there.” She tilted her head toward the kitchen. “Or maybe I can go with you into Bimal’s room?”
Her face appeared flat, lacked its usual curve and liveliness. But he couldn’t abandon what he had started. “No, I’m sorry, love. It’s delicate. It’s what we came here for, remember? Can you stick it out awhile longer?” He put his hands gently on her shoulders.
“Okay.” And then she turned away from him and headed, square shouldered, back into the fray.
He could do this, Sunil told himself.
Bimal was resting with his eyes closed, the gash on his face appearing less livid as well. Something about his equanimity, the way he viewed their separation as fated, made Sunil think of his dissertation. Because Sunil believed in the opposite of fate—in agency, accountability. At least he had thought he did. For years he had confidently—happily, righteously—held people accountable for moral decisions. He was justified in doing this because there was a real, and knowable, moral framework. He could say to people: you ought to know better; you ought to know that’s wrong. But his thesis about evolution undermined this belief. Even if there were objective moral truths, there seemed to be no reason to think evolution would have shaped humans to be able to know them. “You ought to know better” was therefore a lie, because nobody knew anything about right and wrong. Sunil had described evolution as a used-car salesman out to make a buck. Now he had a horrifying thought. He himself was the uncaring salesman. Peddling vehicles he did not believe in because he couldn’t be bothered with their inspection.
Sunil knew he used moral reasoning as a weapon. Like the Nietzschean slaves, he used morality as a defense—against his mother, against bullies and usurpers everywhere. But if Sunil’s view was right, he was a bully himself, a browbeater, not a philosopher. The thought made him ill and ashamed. How could he move forward with his work, knowing its capacity to undermine a sustaining pillar of his life? If he were a religious man, what he faced would be a crisis of faith, as Ariel Kauffman had suggested: if God does not exist, whom do you trust to guide you? Instead he had a crisis of belief: if there is no way of knowing moral truths, how do you have any confidence in the rightness or wrongness of your actions?
For a few queasy minutes, Sunil stood awkwardly next to Bimal’s bed, wondering if he should wake him up or let him sleep. Then his brother opened his eyes, those active, black-coffee eyes, and Sunil saw that they were Urmila’s—wide set and thick with lashes. And their grandfather’s, before time wrinkled and sank them. Sunil pressed his soles down into the tile floor. They had so much to share and discover and, suddenly, for the first time in weeks he did not feel afraid.
Here was someone, his blood relation, who did not care about power. Sunil suspected that in his life as a salesman, Bimal had never cudgeled anyone.
And yet, for his part, Sunil could not abandon the path he’d started down. Because his idea was interesting—provocative, at least—the department had said so, and it was the only idea he had. He was sure Bimal would agree that Sunil had to
continue.
Sunil righted the chair he had knocked over earlier. He had been prepared to talk more, talk was what he knew best, but he realized he was exhausted. So he said simply, “Do you mind if I sit here for a little while? I promise not to talk.”
Bimal turned his palm face up on the sheet, offering it to Sunil. “During my little nap, I was thinking. It’s funny, because it seems to me like your life has been the difficult one. Who can you lean on when so few are there beside you? And yet look at what you have accomplished. So perhaps we can start a club of mutual admiration.” And the two of them again took each other’s hands, and sat quietly in the ensuing, temporary peace.
PART II
1.
[5 h: 06 m]
The Jain universe is shaped like a man. We live in the waist, where there are many oceans and continents, between the sixteen heavens and seven hells. Each of us hopes to be reborn into a better life, but only if our karma has been good. With each cycle, we try again to attain liberation. Only when we have truly been emancipated do our souls float up and rest at the very top heaven, crescent-shaped like a new moon.
2.
An hour ago, Sunil and Amy had left for their honeymoon. Premchand had woken them at five a.m., telling Sarada he would see the couple off. He fed them juice and black tea and jam sandwiches, and patted his son on his beautiful, bristled cheek just before closing the taxi door. Hugged his springy daughter-in-law. Premchand had followed the car out the gate and realized he was not tired. His travel fog had cleared. Perhaps it was the whiskey, which had poured him into bed early, buzzing pleasantly with images of Sunil at Bimal’s bedside. When his son and Amy returned, they would be calm, restored, reunited, and the heart-to-heart with Urmila could begin. Originally, he and Urmila were to depart today, but they had decided to stay and continue to build goodwill.
Yesterday Premchand had come across a troubling scene. At first he was concerned to see Urmila and Mital in such close proximity in the kitchen, the women preparing tea, but when Sarada emerged from the pantry, he relaxed; she knew how to manage the two of them. Then he saw Amy sitting uncomfortably by herself at the end of the table. The women seemed to be ignoring her. So he had invited her to go for a walk with him, and she readily accepted, but Urmila had overruled. “She will stay here with the women. We have many things to discuss.” Premchand had stepped away from the table, and his wife, assuming him gone, had thrust before Amy the centerfold of a magazine, a series of bridal saris. Urmila pressed a ringed finger on the page and said, “Aren’t they beautiful? The silk, the embroidery. We don’t go in for white like the Americans, you can see.”
Amy had nodded. “They’re beautiful. What was your wedding sari like? Do you have pictures?”
But Urmila had ignored this and pressed on, whispering something in the voice she believed to be low and persuasive but was in fact loud enough for all to hear. “Let us talk about your wedding. We will give you a real one. Maybe your parents can help. Something we can all celebrate in together. We buy you the sari, invite some people for eating and dancing, and you can finally make it official.”
“It is official,” Amy said in the smallest voice he had heard from her. Premchand wondered what she would say next, but he was not even supposed to be here, listening in like this, and soon enough his wife noticed he was still standing in the corner and shooed him away. “Be off with you,” she hissed in Gujarati. Amy’s eyes caught his for a moment and then released. She was not going to entrap him.
Relieved the newlyweds would now have some romantic time together, Premchand shook out his legs and set forth for what had come to feel like his constitutional. He liked walking best in the morning, when Nairobi still had a touch of fresh air. He laced up his sneakers and waved to the askari at the gate. His knees felt young, and he relished the neighborhood’s leafy trees.
The streets were still waking. He bought a sleeve of nuts, inadvertently spilling a few large bills on the ground and retrieving them dusted with red earth. After a few more minutes he reached the kiosk where he’d bought the phone card, the day he’d gotten lost. The same vendor was open now, the man’s eye twisted shut, bald patches at the top of his head. Premchand bought a lotto ticket. He would walk just as far as the car junkyard. On the way, he passed a huddle of schoolboys, heads all neatly shaved and carrying string bags.
When Premchand reached the wire fence surrounding the battered cars, he touched the knight in his pocket and lifted his face to the sun. He pulled out the lotto ticket and a coin to scratch it. A gust kicked up a cloud of dirt, causing him to sneeze and cough. When he recovered, he saw that he’d been unlucky. The ticket read, Sorry, try again next time! He was thinking that maybe he would play the lottery back in USA, just for fun, just in case, when a knee jammed into his back and pinned him to the ground. Premchand spat dirt from his mouth. He tried to jerk his arms free but the man was strong. He was panting, and the sweat of the man’s palms seeped through Premchand’s shirt. He tried to speak, to say, Take everything I have, but the man was not listening, he was moaning a low string of unintelligible words. What could he do? He tried to shout, but did not have enough air. In this moment, he could no longer control anything. He did not pray, he never had, nor could he believe in reincarnation, in next. Like his son, he believed in free will, though he knew there were philosophical problems with this, too—his son had explained. Premchand had always been taught to do right in this life, and some few good actions along the way were the most that time gave you. The man pressed down on him hard and continued to moan until suddenly the words grew rocky, loud, angry, scared. Premchand did not move. Warm metal pressed against the base of his skull. The voice continued to speak in Swahili, but by now Premchand understood perfectly. The man was asking forgiveness for what he was about to do.
3.
The hartebeest had shapely, hourglass horns and a brown stripe down the center of their faces. The streak made them look ashamed, marked out for special treatment that was not necessarily kind. Thomson’s gazelles, smaller and lighter-colored than the hartebeest, had racing stripes along their sides. Thimbles for feet. Every now and then they hopped forward, or to the side. Ears wide like donkeys.
“Gazelles are good luck for honeymooners—they bring peace and fertility,” their guide Kioko said, his voice both solicitous and bored. Between teaching them the Swahili words for the animals, he twirled a toothpick between his teeth.
They watched, silently. They gawked. The animals did nothing extraordinary, no fights between rams, no skittishness. They bent their heads and ate, then looked up, looked around, lowered their heads again. Sunil ran his fingertips up and down Amy’s spine. Urged the knotted length of her back to release.
“I don’t care if we never see a lion,” she said. “Or a rhino, the Big Five, whatever they are.”
“Me neither. I’m happy.”
Amy exhaled under his touch, but did not reply.
The horizon’s edge was farther away than he’d ever imagined possible; it split the world into two shades of nothingness. Sunil wondered how much of being in love was the capacity—the desire—to be in the same place at the same time, seeing the same things. He could not believe his luck, being here with her.
With his father and Bimal, there had been progress: honest exchanges you could build on; talk he was eager to return to. But he and his mother hadn’t found more than momentary peace. After talking with Bimal, Sunil had been ready to try again, more softly, with an eye toward discovery instead of blame and reparation, but they’d not had any moments alone together before he and Amy left for the Maasai Mara.
There’d been a rift between Amy and his mother on the last day. When he walked out of Bimal’s room, where his brother had fallen asleep and Sunil had dozed in his chair, nearly two more hours had passed. He’d found Amy silently, rigidly flipping through a magazine in the living room, while the rest of the women were in the kitchen.
“Love,” he had said cautiously. “Are you all right? Ready for our honeymoon?”
“Yes, I’ve been ready for hours,” she said. But she had refused to say anything more. She put whatever it was aside, and they had gone out with Meena that night, as planned, but he could tell the after-tension was still resonating yesterday when they landed on the dusty airstrip in Keekarok, with its tin-shack duty-free shop. Still, she said nothing and he determined to be patient and wait until she was ready.
It was a short ride from there to Ngama Hills Camp, where their unusually petite Maasai hostess had wordlessly taken their bags and dropped them in the center of their “tent”—a large, private building of rough-hewn wood—and disappeared. “If this is camping,” he’d said, impressed. His father had said the camp was four-star, but Sunil had imagined one star was sleeping on the ground with your jacket for a pillow. The bathroom was stocked with bottled water and soap squares; the shower pressure was strong and even. He hadn’t been in a hotel since the Howard Johnsons of his childhood. The light shot sideways across the grounds, pale green leaves turning lazily, and Sunil inhaled the scent of cedar.
They had brushed the journey’s dust off their skin. Untied their shoes, peeled off their socks.
They were alone for the first time in two weeks.
“You’re breathless,” she said.
“That’s because I’ve missed you.” He slid her shirtneck down her arm. Bit the salty apple of her shoulder. “If I were a lion, I’d eat you.” She dug her nails into his chest then roughly traced through the whorl of black hair, up, around, and over a dark nipple to grip his prickly chin, and said sternly, “We’re here now. Be here with me.”
When they returned from the game drive today, canvas sheets had been rolled down the tent walls to protect against wind. They quickly washed their hands and faces and walked down the softly lighted stone path to the main building for dinner. Amy shivered under her fleece. Sunil put his arms around her, and she leaned into him. Perhaps whatever was bothering her had been dissolved by their glorious day with the animals, the lucky gazelles.
The Limits of the World Page 16