The Inheritance of Loss

by Kiran Desai

  Forty-nine

  The judge got down on his knees, and he prayed to God, he, Jemubhai Popatlal the agnostic, who had made a long hard journey to jettison his family’s prayers; he who had refused to throw the coconut into the water and bless his own voyage all those years ago on the deck of the SS Strath-naver.

  “If you return Mutt, I will acknowledge you in public, I will never deny you again, I will tell the world that I believe in you—you—if you return Mutt—”

  Then he got up. He was undoing his education, retreating to the superstitious man making bargains, offering sacrifices, gambling with fate, cajoling, daring whatever was out there—

  Show me if you exist!

  Or else I will know you are nothing.

  Nothing! Nothing!—taunting it.

  But by night, the thought reentered his mind—

  Was this faith that he had turned away, was it paying him back?

  For sins he had committed that no court in the world could take on. But that fact, he knew, didn’t lessen the weight they placed on the scale, didn’t render them nothing…. But who could be paying him back? He didn’t believe in angered divinity, in a scale of balance. Of course not. The universe wasn’t in the business of justice. That had simply been his own human conceit—until he learned better.

  Yet he thought of his family that he had abandoned.

  He thought of his father, whose strength and hope and love he had fed on, only to turn around to spit in his face. Then he thought of how he had returned his wife, Nimi. By this time, Bomanbhai Patel of the delicately carved haveli was dead, and an uncle had usurped the throne, the one misfortune of Bomanbhai—all daughters, no son—playing out its curse beyond his existence.

  ______

  The judge’s mind returned to why exactly he had sent his wife home. It hinged on one particular incident.

  Early one morning in Bonda, a car stopped and a whole group of ladies came flowering out, passionate Congresswoman Mrs. Mohan at the wheel. She had spotted Nimi by the gate of Jemubhai’s residence: “Oh, Mrs. Patel, come along with us—why always no? This time I won’t take no for an answer! Let’s go and have some fun. You must get out of the house now and then.”

  Half happy, half scared, she had found herself on the wide lap of a stranger in the car. They had driven to the station and had to park far away, for thousands of people had gathered to scream and demonstrate: “British raj murdabad!” They had stopped for a while, then followed a procession of cars to a house.

  Nimi was handed a plate with scrambled eggs and toast, but she didn’t eat because there was too much commotion, too many people, all shouting and arguing. She tried to smile at a baby, who remembered how to work the muscles well after the moment and smiled back when it was too late.

  Finally, a voice said, “Hurry up, the train is about to leave, we’d better get to the station,” and most of the crowd poured out of the house again. One of the people left behind had dropped her at her home and that was that.

  “We’re part of history being made, Mrs. Patel. Today you saw one of the greatest men in India.”

  Which was the one? She couldn’t tell.

  ______

  The judge, returning from tour—five partridge, two quail, one deer, recorded in his hunting diary—had been summoned by the district commissioner on his return and been given the astonishing news that his wife had been part of the Nehru welcoming committee at the Cantonment Railway Station. She had partaken of scrambled eggs and toast with top members of the Congress Party.

  It wasn’t the black mark that had been registered against Jemubhai, blocking his promotion, that was of concern to the commissioner, but the embarrassment that would be suffered by the commissioner himself and by the entire civil service that had, he brought down his fist, “A reputation, goddamn it!”

  “It couldn’t be true, sir. My wife is a very traditional lady. She is too reserved, as you know, to attend the club. In fact, she never leaves the house.”

  “She did this time, oh yes, she did. It’s the traditional types that you have to watch out for, Mr. Patel. Not quite as shy as you would like to claim—it serves as a decoy. I think you will find this trip impossible to disprove, since we have corroboration of it from more than one person. I trust that no member of your family,” he paused, “will do anything to compromise your career again. I’m warning you, Patel, as a friend.”

  Unfriendly face. Mr. Singh hated Jemubhai and he hated Gujaratis and, in particular, he hated Patels, always out to seek their own advantage, like jackals.

  Jemubhai drove home along the canal road. He knew the efficiency of the spies they employed, but his jaw had clenched and unclenched: How could it be?

  “Out of kindness I invited her,” Mrs. Mohan had said when confronted by Jemubhai.

  “Out of diabolic slyness,” Jemubhai fumed.

  “Out of naughtiness,” Mr. Mohan said, placing a mithai in Mrs. Mohan’s mouth to congratulate his politically astute wife.

  But what would Nimi say?

  ______

  His back was to her as she entered. Slowly he fixed himself a drink, poured a cruel shimmer of Scotch, picked up ice cubes with silver pincers in the shape of claws, dropped them into his glass. The ice cracked and smoked.

  “What is it?” he asked, swiveling the cubes and turning around, an expression on his face as if he were holding court, preparing to follow a careful rational process.

  He swallowed and the whiskey half paralyzed his esophagus. Then the numbness dissipated in a delicious release of heat.

  He counted on the fingers of his free hand:

  1. “Are you just a country bumpkin?”

  Pause.

  “Are you a liar?”

  Pause.

  “Are you playing foolish female games?”

  Pause.

  “Are you trying deliberately to make me angry?”

  Long long pause.

  Then, a venomous spat-out sentence:

  “Or are you just incredibly stupid?”

  When she said nothing, he waited.

  “Which of the above? We are not ending this conversation until you reply.”

  Longer wait.

  “Which? Are you bloody stupid, I ask you?!”

  Silence.

  “Well, I will have to conclude that it is all of the above. Is it all of the above??”

  With fear that grew as she spoke the words, summoning up the same spirit of the powder-puff night, she defied him. To his amazed ears and her own shocked ears, as if waking up to a moment of clarity before death, she said: “You are the one who is stupid.”

  For the first time he hit her, although he had wanted to before and fought the urge for some time. He emptied his glass on her head, sent a jug of water swinging into the face he no longer found beautiful, filled her ears with leaping soda water. Then, when this wasn’t enough to assuage his rage, he hammered down with his fists, raising his arms to bring them down on her again and again, rhythmically, until his own hands were exhausted and his shoulders next day were strained sore as if from chopping wood. He even limped a bit, his leg hurting from kicking her.

  “Stupid bitch, dirty bitch!” The more he swore, the harder he found he could hit.

  Blotchy bruises showed the next morning in disastrous contrast to the sight of contented civilization—eggs in eggcups, tea cozy on the pot, newspaper. The bruises didn’t fade for weeks. Ten blue and black fingerprints clamped on her arm, a thunder-dark cloud loomed up on her side where he had pushed her into the wall—a surprisingly diffuse cloud for that one hard precise push.

  The anger, once released, like a genie from a bottle, could never again be curtailed. The quieter she was, the louder he shouted, and if she protested, it was worse. She soon realized that whatever she did or didn’t do, the outcome was much the same. His hatred was its own creature; it rose and burned out, reappeared of its own accord, and in her he sought only its justification, its perfection. In its purest moments he could imagine him
self killing her.

  At this point he grew circumspect, meticulous in every other area of his life—his work, his bath, his hair-combing—uneasy with the realization of how simple it would really be for him to skid from control and jeopardize his career to commit a final violent act.

  ______

  Spring came to Βonda in milk-swilled colors and newly hatched caterpillars, lizards, and frogs hopped and crawled about in adorable baby size. He could bear her face no longer, bought her a ticket, and returned her to Gujarat.

  “I can’t go,” Nimi said, waking from her stupor. She could take it for herself—in fact it would be like a balm, a dark place to hide herself—but for her family—well, the thought of their shame on her behalf was too much to bear.

  “If I don’t send you back,” he had said to her at this point, in a tone almost kind, “I will kill you. And I don’t want to be blamed for such a crime, so you have to go.”

  Six months later a telegram arrived in Bonda to announce the arrival of a baby.

  Jemubhai got drunk that night and not out of joy. Without seeing his child, he was sure what it would look like: red as a blister, going off like a kettle, spilling liquids, waves of heat and anger emanating from it.

  Far away, Nimi was staring at her daughter. She was fast asleep, and in those early months of life, peace seemed to be deeply anchored in her nature.

  ______

  “Your wife is ready to return. She is rested,” wrote the uncle in the haveli, hopefully. He had mistaken the reason for Nimi’s arrival home and attributed it to Jemubhai’s concern for his wife’s health, because it was appropriate, after all, to have a daughter return for the birth of a first child. They hoped this baby would bring the father back to their community. He was influential now—he might help them all.

  ______

  Jemu sent money with a letter. “It will not be suitable,” he replied. “My work is such. No schools. Constant travel….”

  The uncle turned his niece from the door. “You are your husband’s responsibility,” he said angrily. “Go back. Your father gave a dowry when you married—you got your share and it is not for daughters to come claiming anything thereafter. If you have made your husband angry, go ask for forgiveness.”

  Please come home, my dear, my lovely girl.

  She had lived the rest of her life with a sister who had not married as successfully, as high up, as Nimi. Her brother-in-law resented every bite that entered Nimi’s mouth. He watched for signs that she was growing fat under his generous care.

  ______

  Jemubhai’s father arrived to plead.

  “Our family honor is gone. We are lucky Bomanbhai is dead, thank God. It’s the scandal of the town.”

  “Why are you talking like this?” he said to his father. “You’re following the script of a village idiot. She is unsuitable to be my wife.”

  “It was a mistake to send you away. You have become like a stranger to us.”

  “You are the one who sent me and now you come and say it was a mistake! A fine thing.” He had been recruited to bring his countrymen into the modern age, but he could only make it himself by cutting them off entirely, or they would show up reproachful, pointing out to him the lie he had become.

  ______

  His father stayed only two nights. They didn’t talk much after the first conversation, and Jemubhai asked no questions about anyone in Piphit, since he realized that it would have been a mockery to do so. But when his father left, Jemubhai tried to give him some money, shabbily trying to transfer it between hands. He wouldn’t take it, turned his face, and climbed into the car. The judge felt he should call him back, was about to, the words began in his throat—but then he didn’t say anything and the driver took his father back to the station where, not so long ago, Nimi had, unknown to herself, seen Nehru.

  ______

  War broke out in Europe and India, even in the villages, and the news of the country disintegrating filled the newspapers; almost a million were dead in riots, three to four million in the Bengal famine, thirteen million were evicted from their homes; the birth of the nation was all in shadow. It seemed appropriate.

  The judge worked harder than ever. The departure of the British left such a vacuum of power, all Indian members of the ICS rose to the very top, no matter what side they had taken in the independence movement, no matter their talents or expertise.

  Somewhere, in the course of those dusky years, a second telegram arrived, the telegram that preceded the telegram about Sai’s impending arrival at Cho Oyu.

  A woman had caught fire over a stove.

  Oh, this country, people exclaimed, glad to fall into the usual sentences, where human life was cheap, where standards were shoddy, where stoves were badly made and cheap saris caught fire as easily—

  —as a woman you wanted dead or—

  —well, as a woman who wanted to kill herself—

  —without a witness, without a case—

  —so simple, a single movement of the hand—

  —and for the police, a case so simple, just another quick movement of the hand—

  —the rupees made an oiled movement between palms—

  “Oh thank you, sir,” said a policeman.

  “Nothing to thank me for,” said the brother-in-law.

  And in a blink of an eye you could have missed the entire thing.

  The judge chose to believe it was an accident.

  Ashes have no weight, they tell no secrets, they rise too lightly for guilt; too lightly for gravity, they float upward and, thankfully, disappear.

  These years were blurry for many, and when they came out of them, exhausted, the whole world had changed, there were gaps in everything—what had happened in their own families, what had happened elsewhere, what filth had occurred like an epidemic everywhere in a world that was now full of unmarked graves—they didn’t look, because they couldn’t afford to examine the past. They had to grasp the future with everything they had.

  One true thing Jemubhai learned: a human can be transformed into anything. It was possible to forget and sometimes essential to do so.

  ______

  Now Jemubhai wondered if he had killed his wife for the sake of false ideals. Stolen her dignity, shamed his family, shamed hers, turned her into the embodiment of their humiliation. Even they couldn’t accept her then, and her life could only be useless after that, and his daughter could only be useless and absurd. He had condemmed the girl to convent boarding schools, relieved when she reached a new height of uselessness and absurdity by eloping with a man who had grown up in an orphanage. Not even the relatives expected him to pay any attention to her again—

  He hadn’t liked his wife, but that was no excuse, was it?

  Then he remembered a moment long ago when he had indeed liked her. He was twenty, she fourteen. The place was Piphit and they were on a bicycle, traversing gloriously down a slope through cow pats.

  ______

  Sai had arrived so many years later, and though he had never properly admitted the fact to himself, he knew he hoped an unacknowledged system of justice was beginning to erase his debts.

  ______

  “Mutt,” his voice splintered. “My funny love. My naughty love. My funny naughty love.” Over the mountains he went searching.

  … Joined by Sai and the cook.

  ______

  When Mutt went missing, Sai, who had hidden her loss of Gyan first in a cold and then in the madness of the hillside, found a disguise so perfect, even she was confused as to the origin of her misery. “Mutt Mutty Mutton chop,” she yodeled wildly, in a way she could never ever have publicly proclaimed her own unhappiness. She felt grateful for the greatness of this landscape, walked on trying to recover the horizon—for it felt as if the space bequeathed her at the end of a romance that had promised a wide vista—well, it was nonexistent. Sadness was so claustrophobic.

  The cook was walking, too, shouting, “MUTTY,” his worry over his son gloved in Mutt’s vanishing
, “MUTTY.” He was talking to his fate—his hand was out, his palm was open, the letter, it had not come.

  Fifty

  “No bus to Kalimpong.”

  “Why not?”

  It was in the newspaper, wasn’t it? The man at the Siliguri bus station had been surprised at Biju’s ignorance. On TV? In every conversation? In the air?

  Then the problems were continuing?

  Worsening. How could he not know? Where had he come from?

  From America. No newspaper, no phone….

  He nodded, then, in sympathy.

  But: “No vehicles going to Kalimpong. Things are very tense, bhai. There was shooting there. Everyone has gone crazy.”

  Biju became insistent. “I have to go. My father is there….”

  “Can’t go. There’s no way. There’s an emergency situation and they’ve put up roadblocks, spread Mobil oil and nails all over the streets—roads are completely closed.”