Before leaving, Sunil lingered in front of a wooden stick with a bulbous end. The Maasai craftsman lifted it off the rickety table and vigorously demonstrated its use—to bludgeon things. “A cudgel!” he said. “I’ll take it. If my mother doesn’t want it, I’ll keep it for myself.”
Amy nodded encouragingly and joked that it was the perfect gift to broker peace.
They rode silently back toward camp. Then a voice crackled over the radio. Sunil and Amy perked up for a moment, as if someone were calling them, but Kioko quickly answered in sentences too long and complicated for the rudimentary device in his hand. He said to them, “Shuee. You are very lucky indeed.”
When they reached their destination, fifteen tense, jostled minutes, three or four vans were already gathered, each one inching closer to a ring of trees twenty yards away.
At first Sunil didn’t see anything, his eyes not discerning among the sprouting trees and branches, the encompassing bunches of leaves, until, all of a sudden, it was there, again far larger than he expected. It stretched languorously across tree limbs. Fur sleek and spotted, its paws large as human skulls. A yowling carried on the wind. Not the sound from last night, but related. He had not told Amy about his terror, or his midnight email. He didn’t want to burden her. It was time for him to be stoic and carry them along.
4.
In the mornings, before leaving for work, he had always given her a list: shirt cleaned, dentist appointment changed, squeaky brakes examined. If the roof needed fixing, if the heater broke, she was the one who was home and could deal. He left her cash. These things were little effort, but she resented being told what to do. Sometimes she’d given Sunil the tasks, and that had helped somewhat. But now she had a decision before her that she could not make.
Sarada said it was too much money. She’d called five different airlines, and the prices for flying a body back to USA were madness. “Ghastly,” Sarada said. “How dare they exploit grieving families!” Then she murmured, “I know it is hard, sister, but we must go one way or another. Already it has been one full day.” The impatient little sister who always knew what other people should do. When she learned how to braid, she’d insisted on doing her older sister’s plaits, too, because she did it better—tighter, neater, more swiftly.
Urmila felt paralyzed to make a decision without Sunil. He was due back tomorrow. It was hard to explain this to Sarada, who insisted waiting was not how it was done. Was not healthy for the soul, or for the survivors.
Too late, she realized her sister was right.
Her son slumped and crumpled when Sarada told him—Urmila could not yet bear to say the words—and his weakness terrified her.
Tight cords in his neck, a pained hunch in his back, Sunil agreed they shouldn’t ship the body back. “Just cremate here,” he swallowed at the word, “and take the ashes home.”
Yes, fine, take care of the body here. But Sunil was also insisting they hold the funeral in Columbus, and to Urmila that seemed impossible. She felt she had been in Nairobi for months and could hardly remember her home in America.
Outside it was a bright afternoon, but the curtains were drawn in the living room, sealing them inside a gray vault.
“You want to hold the service in America, it’s okay,” her sister said. “I’ll go with you. I understand. The life was there.”
Sarada had said the life, not your life.
“Who should I call?” Sunil said. He mentioned the Savlas, plus other family friends Urmila hadn’t seen in years.
Premchand had never talked about Nairobi unless she brought it up, didn’t speak to his family unless they called him. He’d decided Ohio over Texas, where a nephew lived; where in Columbus to live (closest to the hospital, but far from their friends); where to send Sunil to school, paying pricey tuition that sucked away their savings. He’d chosen their son’s name—first suggesting bland American Sam before agreeing to Sunil. Of course her husband had been the one to decide they would marry in the first place. He knew her family, he had weighed the options; he’d selected her. Of course her family would agree to a doctor, no matter that he was awkward and difficult and cold. He would provide.
She had been impressed at first by how much he knew, his years in India adding worldliness to his smart reputation. He was handsome. He complimented her cooking. He did not raise his voice. He didn’t care how she spent her free time. Yet he was not as good as people said. Now, abandoned, barely breathing on her own, she could admit that she agreed with her brother when he said to his friends, “Mr. Hollywood left us when we needed him. He could have stayed and helped us improve, but he wanted America for himself.”
She couldn’t take her husband back with her. Not even the remains. No service in Columbus. She had to take care of him here.
She motioned for Sunil to slide closer to her on the couch. Took his hand, fingers long and smooth like his father’s at the same age. They sat like this a moment. “I know this place is not important to you,” she said. “Your father agreed. But we are all here.”
Sunil shook his head. “His work was there, all his colleagues, our house. That was home. We should have the service there. We can’t stay here. It’s not what Dad would have wanted. Here it will be religious—he’d hate that. No prayers, he told us.
“And what about his organs—his heart, corneas. Were they donated? Maybe it’s not too late to call the hospital. Mom, where is the number?”
Urmila stared at him. She barely understood what he was saying. “We are in Nairobi! They don’t do these things here.”
“Sister, I must tell you—” Sarada began, but Urmila turned to her and snapped, “Hush up!”
“I know where we are,” Sunil said. “Dad moved away from here. He left this country and chose to live somewhere else; we have to honor that choice. We have to tell people at home what happened—he can’t just disappear from the face of the earth. He had thousands of patients, maybe some of them want to come.”
She shook her head and said with force, “Your father didn’t have any friends. He worked morning to night every day of the week and sat home on weekends reading the paper. You don’t know. The last twelve years you are out of the house. I know.” She would not let her son erase her husband’s flaws, even in the wake of his death. Why should his voice count more than hers?
For nearly three days her son and his wife had not picked up the phone, had not bothered to check their voicemail. They’d returned last night still flying high on their good time.
“I think I know something about my father,” Sunil said now. “I listened when he talked. He told me no prayers!”
“Maybe you are like him, but you did not know him. You were a child. A wife knows her husband best.”
Sunil took back his hand. Breathed long, jagged breaths. “You knew him in a different way. Not better. I want to do something that will honor him. He did a lot of good things for a lot of people. It makes me sad that you don’t see that.”
The ghost of the father in the body of the son? Urmila saw on his face the hot burning of his childhood tantrums. She was sure the hardness had grown fiercer as he continued his schooling.
She would not do what was against her heart on account of her son, not even for her husband. Funerals were for the living, and she needed to live. Sunil had decades in front of him, and she did not. Urmila stood and straightened the hem of her sweater. She told her sister, “Make the arrangements here, please. An Indian funeral, like we do.”
Sunil wrote and faxed an obituary to the Columbus Dispatch. But there he stopped. He told Sarada no, he would not cleanse the body. He would not do any of those eldest-son things. He wasn’t even the eldest, after all. He would stay to attend the funeral, but nothing more. Urmila had told him he was free to leave, though she was relieved he stayed. But Amy, what to do with her? The girl was an intrusion. When Urmila looked in her direction, she squinted or removed her g
lasses, deliberately blurring her outlines.
She had felt liberated when the couple had left Nairobi. After a few days of this freedom, she’d resolved to have a heart of polished stone; getting along was easier then. She had decided that when she got home she would smoothly, unashamedly tell her friends back in Columbus about her son’s marriage, no big deal. Talking with Meena, she heard about others, friends of her niece, who’d married out. Urmila had admitted then that Amy was a nice girl—kind, intelligent, pretty enough—it’s just that she was not one of them. She would not keep her son close. Maybe not, Meena said, but maybe there was a way to share. She’d seen how it could be with the new couples. Many had two weddings. Yes, Urmila said, this was what she had suggested! They’d stumbled by marrying in haste, and a wedding at the Oshwal Centre would bring everyone together. Make it official.
Urmila told Meena how the day before they had left for safari, she had asked Amy, sweetly, over tea and barfi, if she’d like to get dressed up in a wedding sari. They could shop for a beautiful one, even if not as good as in India. There were plenty to help with the food, the preparations. But no, Amy didn’t care to be a part. Jews could be stubborn this way.
Meena had demurred, said to give the girl time—when the couple had babies, things would get easier. “Best to play wait and see, don’t you think?”
This morning Meena had found an old picture of Premchand in an album Urmila hadn’t seen for years. It was dated 1961, when he was recently back from India. Urmila had not known him then, only his name. In the photograph, she saw a narrow, knife-like man; he didn’t look into the camera but up and off to the side, as if at a bird in a tree. He wore a white collared shirt, dark pants, his hands in his pockets. Behind him was the Khoja Mosque. It was impossible to tell what he was doing there or whom he had been with. No one remembered taking the picture. Her sister put the framed photograph with the deevo, agarbati, flowers, and rice on a table next to the casket, so people could scatter the petals and grains.
They were introduced in 1963, while Urmila was still thinking about her man in Mombasa. Her first meeting with Premchand was on a sunny, warm, lazy day. She’d gone to see Taj Mahal with Sarada and Ajay, and in the parking lot they’d introduced her to a skinny man with a triangle nose. Afterwards, he asked if she’d liked the film, and when she said, Bina Rai, what a woman, she was radiant!, he’d smiled and agreed. He liked the songs, he’d said. Six months later they were married. Sometime after that, her sister had revealed that Premchand had slept through most of the movie.
Regarding the photograph, Amy had said to Urmila, “So handsome.” The girl appeared folded inward, her nose and eyes red. She said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, for both of you.” She said, “I wish I had known him better.” She said, “Tell me if there’s anything I can do. Meena said she’d help me find something suitable to wear.”
Urmila said, “Thank you for your concern,” and stood up to take her tea in the kitchen. She thought instead of her friend Maddy, who would know how to show sincere sadness, who would know how to help the way grown women do. The day that Premchand disappeared, Maddy had emailed her to say she’d quit her hygienist job already and secured a property. She’d come up with a name: Always in Bloom. Still so much to be done—but she had started! She was grateful for Urmila’s confidence and inspiration, and she wanted to thank her when she returned to the States.
The note had overwhelmed Urmila, and she was shocked to find herself crying, her chest heaving in gasps—of relief? gratitude?—and this was how Sarada how had found her when she’d burst in, breathless, pausing—“How do you know already?”—before falling to her knees and weeping, Oh sister, something terrible has happened.
First silence, then speaking. A voice filtering in through the whirring of the outside world: The Jain scriptures reflect belief in the eternal nature of the Soul; conviction that it is a consequence of the Soul being entangled in the material world; conviction that it is a time of bodily change; resigned acceptance of the inevitability of death; trust in the benefit of living a religious and moral life; and belief in the progress of the Soul toward liberation.
They sang the Namokar Mantra. Or, some sang it.
By reciting this prayer we are aspiring to follow the example of humans who have progressed to monk and nun, above the layperson, and elevate ourselves to the higher stage.
Urmila pretended attention, feigned silent grief wrought by the prayer. Inside, under her white garments, she was in turmoil.
Sunil didn’t offer a remembrance. Instead, Bimal rose and testified to his uncle’s goodness, his spirit of adventure, his generosity. Urmila could spit. What did anyone here know? They did not know!
When the words and music ended and the visitors had eased out of the building, the casket was closed and the men hefted it onto their shoulders. Ajay, Anup, Gopal … her eyes down the line … Bimal with his cane—
—and Sunil, jaw drawn ever tighter, desperately pressing his palms into a corner of the weight, tears streaming, the free hands of his uncles patting his shoulders. Brow and ear visible for just a moment more before the doors closed. They descended to the crematorium. At this time the ladies were delicately ushered away from the fire and ash.
Yet Urmila’s eyes followed the dark wake of the men’s jackets. She was consumed by the desire to go with them, an engulfing, enraging desire that took her down, down. She stumbled a few steps forward, toward the fire, but now she was on the floor. She’d wanted to go down—not down here to the floor but downstairs with the men to the fire to press the button to see it to the end, to see the flames and feel the heat. She wanted to know finality in her core.
But she knew the rules. An exception would not be made for her. Her sister hoisted her to her feet.
“I can walk,” Urmila said.
“I know you can.”
“I’ll take her. Mother,” said a man’s voice beside her; suited arms supported hers.
“Bimal,” she murmured. “My heart.”
“No,” said the voice, this cracking, mournful voice she did not recognize. “The other one.”
No! Not the one she wanted, she wanted the one who did not know her weaknesses, who would love her simply because she had given life, she wanted ease, and this one had never been ease and would never be. And she was so tired. “You,” she said, crying. “I don’t want you. You are not mine. Go now, and don’t come back.” As her body shook, she wondered if she was in her right mind, could ever be of right mind and heart again.
Now, in a hardbacked chair, a plate on her lap, she watched the others eat and murmur and shake their heads. She removed her glasses so she could sit without seeing, without knowing. But when she recognized the tender, limping figure of Bimal, dressed in navy blue, cross the room to where his brother leaned against the wall, arms folded, Urmila slipped the lenses back on and the world shifted into place, even if her understanding did not. Bimal’s scar was a lightning bolt across his face. It would always be a reminder of their nightmare, the near death that had preceded real death. But perhaps the universe was not so cruel. If someone had to die, it was right that it should have been her husband and not her son.
Urmila stood up, feeling invisible. They were all eating; no one was looking at her. Her sons had their backs to her. She sneaked up on them, her boys. She followed a few feet behind when they drifted inside a room, Bimal haltingly, adjusting his weight on his cane. She stood outside the doorway and leaned her shoulder against the wall. Her older son sat on the arm of a chair, while Sunil paced.
“A few months ago,” Sunil was saying. “Before that, maybe six. We were both bad on the phone.” A pause—he slipped from view. “You?”
“Years. I am sure of it. Premchand Fua, to me. Not my father. He was only father to you.”
Sunil reappeared, his nose sharp. His arms swayed loose, uncontrolled, until they sagged in defeat. He looked at the floor. “He was
good. I know he was a good person. Everyone at the clinic liked him, not just the doctors, but the nurses, the staff. He was kind to people.” He shrugged and looked into Bimal’s marked face, his own skin flawless, his eyes despairing. “But ask me ten facts? Maybe I could give you five.”
“Facts change,” Bimal said. He smiled.
Smiled! Over what? This untruth? A balm to make the other feel better? Urmila opened her mouth to protest, then quickly clamped it shut. Because there was something here between them she had not expected. Some give and sweetness. Some usefulness. Some softening of shells, allowing the other to talk or stay silent, to be right or wrong. She leaned forward, cupped a hand behind her ear, but the hallway had grown loud and the voices crowded out the voices of her sons.
She watched, as if from very far away, as Bimal reached into a shoulder bag and removed a worn canvas sack, angular with hard edges, like a short stack of prayer books. Sunil’s eyes grew wide. Bimal appeared to insist, thrusting the package into Sunil’s hands. Sunil was at a loss—this she could see—but he held the sack to his chest and nodded.
They withdrew into themselves. In the days that followed, anything that needed to be said between Urmila and Sunil was relayed by Sarada or Meena. Occasionally Urmila exchanged words with Amy, but she preferred to avoid her as well. At night she slept and woke, slept and woke, remembered the fact of Premchand’s death and forgot it again. After each remembering she expected to feel some change, some reconfiguration of the harsh world, the way its brightness and loudness hurt her eyes and ears, but she did not. She waited for change, but it did not come. Or perhaps she could not recognize it. Or maybe she was beyond change; change was something that happened now to other people. She would remain herself, alone inside her skin, as she always had.
The Limits of the World Page 18