by Shobha Rao
“Akka, please.”
“Anything? Do you remember anything?”
Someone on a bicycle passed without seeing them. Wind rustled the leaves of the nearby tree. Poornima heard a dim and distant moan, coming from the direction of the sea. “There was something round nearby,” Madhavi said slowly, forlornly, into the dark.
“Round?”
“Like a cricket stadium. But bigger. Much bigger.”
How did this girl know about cricket stadiums? “And what else?”
“There were not many people. None. It was empty.”
“This entire country is empty.”
“And the buildings had no windows.”
Poornima nodded. She would’ve smiled, but she didn’t want to scare the girl. Instead she looked into the hushed shadows: the low clouds, unmoving, the streetlight, now gone out, the silent streets, the wearied face, the lifeless body. She recalled then the delight in Madhavi’s eyes as she’d eaten the pastry—on that day in a wholly different life—the sugary dough crumbling between her fingers. Poornima took a deep breath, a deep American breath, and she thought, Such a quiet country, and yet so much to cry for. She could think of nothing more to say, and so, before leaving, before walking into the night, she said, “Be careful,” knowing that care had already been squandered, that care—for this girl, for her journey—had already, long ago, been scattered and spent.
* * *
Poornima started early the following morning. She arrived at Third and Seneca, after asking no less than a dozen people how to get to the stadium, and waited for the 21 line. She took it to where she was within sight of the stadium, and then, not knowing where else to start, walked back to Third Avenue. On one side of the street were warehouses, and on the other were railroad tracks. She looked at the warehouses: no windows, and not a single person. But Madhavi had not mentioned railroad tracks, which Poornima guessed she would have had she noticed them. So she walked deeper into the rows of long, single-story buildings, all of them painted either gray or beige. She took her time, slowly reading the few signs on the outsides of some of the buildings, peering into the windowed garage doors. She kept close to the sides of the buildings, studied every car parked along them, and scanned around each corner. She knew she was conspicuous, even with her western clothing and a scarf draped over the side of her face to hide the scarring, but only Mohan knew her face—that was her biggest advantage. Besides, she concealed herself the best she could when the few cars drove past her, knowing she could spot his car a kilometer away.
She walked for hours. The maze of warehouses went on and on. Some of the alleys between the buildings had no names, so Poornima would reach the same warehouses from the other side, having walked in a wide circle. She lost her sense of direction, so when she came into a clearing, she looked for the tops of the downtown buildings to indicate true north. Two men slowed—one in a pickup truck and another in a blue sedan—and asked if she needed help. Poornima pulled the scarf higher across her face and shook her head. She heard a freight train go by and thought suddenly of the train she hadn’t gotten on in Namburu. She thought of the torn pieces of the ticket, fluttering to the ground. What if I had gotten on that train? she wondered. What would I have become? She was unused to such a thought—a thought that had no end—and so she shuttered it, slammed it closed, as if it were the door to a house that was haunted.
She left when the sun swung to the west. She was hungry and tired on her bus ride back. It was possible she wasn’t even in the right place, she considered; it was possible Madhavi had meant another neighborhood entirely, but it had now been a week since she’d arrived, and she had only two left. She returned to the warehouses the following day, and every day for the next four. It wasn’t until the fifth afternoon, after walking for hours through an increasingly heavy rain, that she turned a corner—along a gray building advertising radial tires and other car parts—and saw it: she saw the black car. It was Mohan’s, that much she knew immediately, but from where she was standing, she couldn’t quite see the entrance to the building. She walked the long way, around the massive warehouse that faced Mohan’s car, and emerged on the other side, hiding against one wall. She was now closer to the door but farther from his car. There was one other car, red, parked in front of Mohan’s, and this, she guessed, belonged to either the brother or the father.
She waited, shivering, in the cold rain, but not a single girl came out of the warehouse or went in. At three o’clock, she returned to the bus stop, knowing it was an hour’s ride home. The rain picked up in the evening, after Mohan left, so she waited until the next morning—she bought a flashlight and thicker socks, and when she arrived, she saw that this time neither car was parked in front of the building. She tiptoed to its entrance and squinted to see through the darkened glass door. Nothing. She tried the flashlight and saw a few meters into what she guessed was a vast room, piled with boxes, and with the outlines of maybe a desk at the far end. There were no other rooms that she could see. She walked around the building, looking for an unlocked back way, or a loading dock, like she’d seen in so many of the other warehouses, but this one was only metal siding on all sides; she listened for sounds, voices; she thought she might try to break open the lock on the door, but as she stood examining it, a car passed along the adjoining alley.
If Savitha did live here, it occurred to Poornima, crouched against the side of the building, why would she be here during the day? She would be cleaning houses during the day.
That night, when she returned, the warehouse was even darker and quieter than it had been during the day. She knocked on the door, waiting for a light to go on. She walked around the building, slamming her fists against the sides. She tried to break open the heavy lock, and then the glass of the door, but it was reinforced, and neither the plastic flashlight nor the weight of her body did any good. Where was she? Where was she? Poornima stared at the door, gave it one last kick, said to the dark, unbreakable glass, “Not here,” and left.
* * *
On the bus ride home, after midnight, she looked down at her bruised arms, her gashed elbows and hands, her broken flashlight, and realized the thing she had known all along: Mohan was her only hope.
* * *
She bought a bottle of whiskey—the most expensive she could find at the corner store—and then she spent the afternoon making rice and dal and eggplant curry (the fattest eggplants she had ever seen, and which cooked nothing like the ones in India) and potato cutlets, though the hot oil frightened her so much that she made just enough for Mohan and turned off the stove. But even with the scents of the food and the bottle of whiskey set out on the counter Mohan refused to stay for dinner. He left without a word, before she could think of anything more to convince him.
Poornima grew desperate.
She paced the small room, looking out of the window, up and down the street, every minute or so. She remembered, back on her street in Vijayawada, the man who’d been ironing the child’s frock, and the sleeping rickshaw wallah, and the cows and the dogs poking among the small garbage heaps, and the vendors calling through the streets, and she was struck by a sudden and violent homesickness. She nearly bent over with it, but straightened her back at once. For what, she admonished herself, angry with herself for even this slight moment of weakness. For brothels and charkhas and men and mothers-in-law? Is that what you’re homesick for? She smoothed down her blouse and jeans, unused to wearing them, and which, again, she’d bought in Vijayawada specifically for her trip to America, and took a deep breath: she recalled suddenly the one thing that had made his eyes flicker, the only thing, in the two weeks that she had known him, that had given him pause.
She left the whiskey on the counter, and when he arrived the next night, she said, “I won’t drink it. You might as well take it with you.”
He looked at the bottle and hesitated, and when he did, she said, “Who is Lazarus?”
“What?”
“Lazarus. From that poem. The one you li
ke. Puffrock said something about being Lazarus.”
His face softened. Or maybe it was only his lips that seemed to lose something of their severity, their density. “You remember that?”
“I’ve been wondering.”
“He’s from the Bible. Jesus brought him back to life, after he died. After four days, I think.”
“Was he being tested? Like Sita?”
“No, I think it was Jesus who was being tested. Or maybe his believers. But not Lazarus.”
Poornima looked at him. “Why do you like it? Because you think Puffrock is like you and me?”
“Proofrock. And yes, and because it’s such a lonely poem.”
“You should open it,” she said, nodding toward the whiskey.
This time, there was no hesitation. He poured himself a half glass of whiskey, the gold-brown liquid sending up the strong scent of deep forests and woodsmoke and something Poornima couldn’t name, but recalled, maybe that thunderstorm, she thought, the one that had caught her on the Krishna. He settled under the window and placed the glass in front of him. He took a sip.
Poornima watched him. She thought he might leave after finishing the first glass, but he poured himself another. She said to herself, Wait till he finishes this one. Wait till the end.
When he did, she said, “Your days must be long.”
His head was leaned back against the wall. He seemed to nod, or maybe she only imagined it.
“Are there other shepherds? What do you do after leaving here?”
“Homework.”
“Homework?”
He avoided her gaze. “I take classes. At the university.” He raised the bottle again and studied the label. “Where did you get this? I thought I told you not to leave the apartment?”
“For what? What are you studying?”
He laughed, poured another glass. “That Puffrock poem. Other poems, too.”
“But—”
This he drank in one great gulp. “You can tell a lot about a parent from what makes them laugh. When I told him, middle of high school, that I wanted to study literature, he laughed for three days, and then he said, ‘Engineering or medicine. You pick.’ That’s the best part of being an Indian kid,” he said. “We get to pick.” Then he looked at her sternly. “He doesn’t know about the classes. No one does.”
They sat in silence then, he against the window, she against the wall by the kitchen. Nothing stirred, not inside, not outside. Poornima shut her eyes. She could sense him watching her.
“These,” he said into the dark, “these are my favorite lines from the poem: ‘And indeed there will be time / To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” / Time to turn back and descend the stair’.”
He went on to explain each of the lines, each of the words in meticulous detail, and about when the poem was written, and about how the time it was written related to the forces of fear and boredom and modernity, just before World War I, and he even told her about the author himself, and how he had been an immigrant, too, except to England, and Poornima wanted to ask about Michelangelo and Hamlet, but instead, she said, “What else made him laugh?”
There was silence again, and she thought he might be annoyed by her question, but when she opened her eyes, Mohan was asleep, the glass still clasped in his hand.
* * *
She had one week left.
Savitha
1
The bus was in the mountains when Savitha opened her eyes. She had been dreaming of Mohan. Nothing in particular, nothing she could name, not even in the moments after she woke up, but she had a sense that he’d drifted through her dreams, without touching them, like a ghost, or a scent. But then she was jolted from half sleep, and she looked around her frantically, seeing clearly the road, the mountains, the strange faces. The flight. Had there been footsteps behind her? She hadn’t looked. She’d run wildly from bus stop to bus stop, hailing buses just as they’d pulled away; the third local bus that passed her opened its doors; Savitha said, breathless, “New York?” and the driver had laughed and said, “Not quite. You want the Greyhound. I’m going past the station, though. Get on!” At the bus station in downtown Seattle, she’d stood and stared at a map of the United States. She’d found Seattle, knowing there was only water to its west, and then she’d looked for New York. Her gaze had traveled east and east and east. Where could it be? She thought she’d missed it and started again. This time she didn’t stop, and there it was, on the other side, with only water to its east. She’d said to the man at the ticket counter, “How much New York?”
He’d said, “Lady, first you gotta go to Spokane, and then you gotta get on another bus to New York.” And then he’d said, “Thirty dollars.”
She hadn’t understood the first part of what he’d said, but she’d understood that the ticket to New York was thirty dollars. All that way for only thirty dollars!
She’d glanced at the doors to the station, clutched her ticket in her hand, and seated herself in a chair farthest from the entrance; her eyes never left it.
How long would it take her to get there? And what would she do when she did? How would she even begin to look for the jilebi-haired lady with the pearlescent teeth? None of these questions had answers, not yet, but once she was on the bus, pointed away from Seattle, and the fear and the adrenaline had stopped racing, and her heart had stopped pounding, she realized, looking out at the silhouettes of the pine trees and into the dark of the mountains, the road a bolt of cloth draped over them, that sometimes leaving was also a direction, the only one remaining.
They went over Snoqualmie Pass, though Savitha had closed her eyes again by then. Just before she did, the swing of the bus’s headlights caught a clump of purple wildflowers at the base of one lone pine, as if it were an umbrella over the shivering blooms. They passed a long stretch of water on her side of the bus, but the water went on for so long that Savitha thought she might be imagining it in her disorientation, her near delirium. When she woke finally, near sunrise, the mountains were dark, blanketed with trees and farther away. The sky was steel-gray and thick with clouds. There was just enough predawn light that Savitha saw the young pine saplings all along the road, gray-green clumps that held close together and seemed to spin like dervishes in the early-morning songs of birds and wind and even the swoosh of the bus as it sped past them.
Savitha shifted in her seat, her muscles stiff, and she realized with a start that there was a woman seated next to her. Where had she gotten on? She couldn’t recall the bus stopping, but maybe she had switched seats in the night. Savitha looked at her. She was fast asleep, her head lolling toward Savitha’s shoulder. She was as young as Savitha, maybe younger, with fingers littered with silver rings, all except one thumb and one pinkie. There was a tattoo in the triangle between her right thumb and index finger, a symbol Savitha didn’t recognize, but it was a faint tattoo, a watery blue-green, and Savitha sensed, looking at the young woman’s sleeping face, the fine lines around the eyes and the lips already forming, that she hadn’t intended it that way, that she’d intended the tattoo to be a rich blue, a blue with density, depth, the ocean at night, but that it hadn’t worked out that way. Nothing had.
The bus stopped near sunrise, and all the sleeping passengers were herded off. Savitha’s first thought was that maybe they’d already arrived in New York. She’d gotten on at one in the morning, and it was now a little after six. Could it be? But then she looked at the sign above the main door: S-P-O-K-A-N-E. She went to the map again and saw that she wasn’t even out of the state, let alone in New York. A profound tiredness enveloped her. At this rate, it would take her months to get there! She rubbed her bleary eyes and wanted to ask about the bus to New York, but the ticket counter was closed until eight. On the signboard, it listed only two departure times: one to Seattle and the other to a town called Missoula. She checked the map again; Missoula was to the east, Savitha saw, not by much, but east, and was scheduled to leave in two hours. Maybe she would have to take that bus
and transfer again? She didn’t know. She wanted to wait at the bus station for the ticket counter to open, but she saw that the coffee stall inside the station was also closed, and she was hungry. When she walked outside, she looked up and down, and then at every car in the parking lot; she looked for a red car and a black car and a beige car. The streets were dry and cold. It was a mountainous cold, one Savitha had never grown used to, and she pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders. She’d stolen it, the sweater, from Padma, along with the small plastic knapsack, where she kept her remaining eighty-two dollars, the ripped photograph, a change of clothes, the white rectangle of paper, and what remained of Poornima’s half-made sari. The fragment she’d wrapped gently in old newspaper and placed at the bottom of her sack. The bus station was a two-story redbrick building; outside was a row of trees like the trees that had blanketed the mountains all along the highway, and beyond the trees were some buildings, tall but not nearly as tall as they had been in Seattle. It was not yet seven A.M., but Savitha still saw a few people wandering around, not as if they were going anywhere, but simply wandering. That struck her as odd for such an hour, but they paid her no attention, almost as if she were invisible, and continued on their way.
In the parking lot of the bus station, to the right of the row of trees, a man leaned against a yellow car, smoking. There was a woman sitting inside the car, smoking as well, her arm resting on the open window, but neither talked nor looked at the other, like strangers, in fact, though Savitha could see that his thigh was touching the tip of her elbow. Another man was standing against the eastern wall of the bus station, squinting at a newspaper. She stood and watched the light of the sun emerge from behind the distant mountains and bathe him in its glow, his pale white skin turning a burnished gold. She crossed the street and walked in the direction of the buildings until she saw a restaurant. Savitha went inside and sat down in one of the booths. There was a menu resting on the table, filled with pictures, and when the waitress came, Savitha pointed to the one that looked like three little dosas, all in a row. She took a sip of her water and waited. When the plate arrived and she took a bite (with the spoon, fumbling, not knowing how to use either the fork or the spoon), she realized that they weren’t dosas, not in the least. They were sweet! And inside them, instead of potato curry, was the same white fluffy, weightless substance that had been on the banana split. How odd. What a mysterious country, she thought, how small for all its vastness. But they were good, and she was hungry.
