When She Was Queen

by M G Vassanji

  In the living room they are passing around joints. There is an embarrassed silence among the three of them on the step. Rusty refuses a joint with a shake of the head; snatches of “Love Me Tender” intrude, from a CD or tape. A table lamp, its ceramic middle shaped as Elvis, glows on an end table, the King’s lips red and his slicked hair a dark purple.

  People begin to take leave.

  “Why don’t you spend a day or two here?” Vina says to Diamond. “We would like that very much.”

  “That’s what I’ve already asked him to do,” says her husband. “We are like your family,” he reiterates to Diamond. “Spend a couple of days with us. We can even go to the city and get a few Indian movies. And Vina’s biryani is something you cannot pass over.”

  “Please do,” she pleads, with those large black eyes that seem to see through his soul.

  He says quickly, “Yes, I will, thank you. That’s very nice of you. I’ll go back tonight, and return tomorrow. How’s that?”

  And so it is agreed.

  II.

  The Mehtas’ daughter Shireen opens the door, giving a warm smile. She is tall, thin, and pale, her oval face framed by jet-black hair tied behind in a loose ponytail. She has on an oversized yellow T-shirt over denims and has a cookie in her hand. An American child.

  “Come in, Uncle,” she says. “They’re all in the den.”

  He puts his carryall down and she picks it up.

  “Quality time, is it,” he murmurs, and she giggles.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact they’re having tea.”

  And so into this Elvis haunt, with the fervid Rustam Mehta and his bewitching wife Vina. She would make a good fairy-tale sorceress, a Circe waylaying lost voyagers, turning them into captive swine, or whatever. That is unfair, but the thought occurs only because she had been so mesmerizing last night; it is at her bidding, conveyed by the plea in those soft liquid black eyes, that he is back again the next morning. He sights her and her husband sitting on a long sofa at the far end of the living room, in the designated rec area. The table-lamp Elvis stands leering beside her on her other side. Her face lights up immediately she sees him and she hastens forward to greet him.

  “So nice you’ve come,” she says, and beckons, “come inside to where we’re sitting. It’s our lazy hour.”

  She is in blue jeans and a black sweatshirt, and her hair has apparently recently been washed, falling behind glistening and loose in frizzy waves over her shoulders.

  Rusty, wearing a bright red cardigan, fusses with the black-framed bifocals on his nose; they look recent on him and make him look very much the Indian schoolmaster, or the movie version of one. Speaking of which, an Indian movie is playing on the VCR, the scene a police Jeep chasing a suspect into a wheat field. Rusty gets up and shakes hands, says, “Welcome, have a seat.” He beckons toward the other person in the room, a silver-haired woman with a very pink face and dressed in Indian shirt and pyjamas, who cannot shift her eyes from the movie. “My mother-in-law,” Rusty says. The old lady folds hands in a namasté and Diamond does likewise. She goes back to watching the movie.

  “Have some mithai,” Vina says, pointing to the tray of sweets on the coffee table, “and I’ll bring you some tea—or would you like food—are you hungry—”

  “Of course he’s hungry, dear, give him lunch.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Diamond says, “the mithai will do—”

  But that answer is acknowledgement that he’s not had lunch, and the matter is settled. Vina disappears to prepare his food.

  “Come,” Rusty says, putting a hand on Diamond’s back, leading him past the kitchen to the dining room. “Ma—” he says to the old lady, “you finish the movie and tell us what happened.”

  She smiles gratefully at him.

  “Doesn’t talk much,” Rusty says.

  “Does she understand English?”

  “Yes, but she’s embarrassed to speak it in front of strangers.”

  A delicious spicy aroma wafts in from the kitchen, where Vina is heard clattering her equipment. Soon she appears, cheerfully humming, and lays her offering upon the dining table. Mumbling customary gratitude and apologies, Diamond sets upon the chappati and okra, rice and daal. Rusty goes and puts on an Elvis number before returning to sit at the table with Diamond.

  “You’re going to get an overdose of Elvis here,” Rusty smiles. “I’m sure you don’t mind—”

  “He’s too polite to say if he minds,” Vina calls out from the kitchen. “You make sure you don’t take advantage of him.”

  “This house is actually an Elvis shrine—” Rusty continues.

  “And should be declared as one,” his wife adds, still in the kitchen.

  “We have people stopping over from all sorts of places just to see my Elvis memorabilia.”

  “I’d like to see what you’ve got,” Diamond says politely. There are no Elvis exhibits to look at, except for the Elvis lamp, which is quite grotesque, especially when lighted, as he recalls from last night. But there has to be a sanctum somewhere where Rusty keeps them. Now that must be a sight.

  The house, a modest bungalow with its three bedrooms at the back, is in fact adorned with Indian artifacts, brass and marble on flat tops, and wood and cloth hangings, including a red embroidered Krishna playing a flute. The formal, front portion of the living room is set off by a blue and green oriental carpet gracing the white broadloom and three bright Indian miniature paintings on the outer sidewall. In the dining room a couple of ancestors in black and white stare gloomily down at the table from their perch up on a wall.

  Rusty watches his guest indulgently for a while, then catching Diamond’s eye and unable to hold himself any longer he unleashes a spiel on his favourite subject.

  “I’ve been to conferences in Poland, Croatia, Denmark, even Israel—all devoted to Elvis and his influence. He’s taken far more seriously in those countries than here—the c-word is not out of context here … as I was telling you yesterday.”

  It takes Diamond a moment to recall: c for conspiracy.

  “From the very beginning—I’m not sure how familiar you are with Elvis’s history—” Rusty pauses, goes on, “from the very beginning they tried to neuter him—that’s the only word, I’m afraid, because Elvis was pure, unfettered sexual energy—do you know, after his live appearances he would receive threatening phone calls from men? After he appeared on the Steve Allen show—as a dumb cowboy, no less—he said he’d never been so humiliated in his life; Ed Sullivan showed him only from the waist up. But the youngsters loved him, went berserk over his music and his performances. Finally Uncle Sam said ‘I want you,’ and spirited him away to Germany for two crucial years of his life. All because he was singing and dancing like the blacks and showing white folks how cool that was. ‘The coloured folks been singing and playing it just like I’m doin’ now … for more years than I know.’ Those are his words.”

  Rusty nods to himself, becomes silent for a couple of minutes, then gets up. “Here—come—let me show you something—” They go back to the rec room, sit down beside the cabinet that houses the TV and the stereo system. The Indian movie is over, and old Ma sits brooding, staring at the blank screen. “Go take a rest, Ma,” Rusty says gently to her, “there’s cooking to be done later, and you shouldn’t be tired for that.” After a moment’s hesitation she wafts away. Rusty unlocks the bottom level of the cabinet and opens both its doors with a flourish: there is a long row of LPs and singles slanting edgewise on a wire rack. He smiles. “Go on, take a look. There are people who’d kill for even a fraction of this treasure.”

  He begins handing Diamond selected singles to look at, and Diamond takes them gingerly from him, examines them, puts them on the floor beside him. They are old—ancient—some in their thin white inner sleeves only, others with the glossy outer covers intact. Before these 45s, there were the brittle 78 rpms, Diamond recalls.

  Bing Crosby, Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, Ella Fitzgerald, and Elv
is, of course. “Wooden Heart,” “King Creole,” “Don’t Be Cruel” …

  “Can you guess where I got these—most of these—from?”

  “Where?”

  “Bombay. Some are from my own boyhood collection. Some I bought from junk stores, even street vendors—so much had been simply thrown away. I scoured the streets of Bombay looking for Elvis. I could write a book just on Elvis in Bombay….”

  “That’d make a fascinating book,” Diamond says.

  “You think so?”

  “You should write it before someone else does.”

  Rusty appreciates that, seems touched by it.

  “Look at this baby—” he says in a trembling, low voice, eyes shining.

  Diamond takes the record. “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton, the first ever recording of the song.

  “Elvis did not steal credit for it—from Big Mama—as some people claim,” Rusty explains. “On the contrary—everybody else who sang the song, including Bill Haley, simply mushed it up for white audiences. Elvis came along and sang it closest to Big Mama’s style—I’ll let you hear both and you’ll see what I mean. That’s tribute, if you ask me. And the same goes for Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s ‘That’s Alright Mama’—you know that one?”

  “Only Elvis’s version.”

  Bespectacled, scholarly Rusty—Diamond stares at him, crouched on his knees, handling his collection with the greatest devotion and care. Purely on looks, you might take him for a mathematical whiz, a chess player, a mad scientist. But he is an Elvis expert, knows everything there is to know about Elvis. Others can recite Macbeth or Hamlet, Keats or Shelley by heart; Alfred Mendelsohn, Diamond’s father-in-law, can trace extant first editions like living family relations; Rusty Mehta of Bombay can recite every Elvis song from memory and give you the history of all its performances and recordings.

  Rusty has put a hand on Diamond, saying, “I say—sorry, old chap—for going on.” The unexpected Briticism is startling: a mannerism from the past, making a sudden, brief reappearance from banishment.

  They go back to the dining table for tea. A large variety of mithai—sweetmeats—has been spread out on a tray.

  “From my sister in Chicago,” Vina says, beaming.

  “Tell me,” Vina asks a little later, when just the two of them are at the table, “how long are you staying with us?”

  “Oh. I’m leaving tomorrow. I hope I’ve not inconvenienced you—” Had he taken last night’s invitation too literally? He is soon disabused of that thought.

  “Oh no, it’s not that I want you to leave! In fact I wish—I hope—you’ll stay longer—” There’s a childlike plea in her voice.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  Why indeed, because I’d like to be moving along, I can hardly stay in the home of complete strangers more than a night, and even then…. But he doesn’t know quite how to put that to her.

  “Think about it,” she says.

  He smiles, which could have been taken as polite assent. He feels sorry for her; that wonderful exterior, this show of Indian hospitality that will not take no for an answer, hides a terrible loneliness and isolation after all. She deserves better: masses of people around her, an extended family and friends, in-laws to bicker with, servants to do her work, a community she belongs to.

  A place such as this mummifies you at the core, that vital core of your being. You learn the lingo and show off the idiom, use the modern conveniences and say how could you ever have lived back there; but all the while that mummy inside you cries out for release. Or you grow warts, get weird….

  On a cold and grey Chicago morning…

  “Do you know this one?” Rusty asks, having put on a CD.

  “Yes,” Diamond replies.

  Rusty gives him a look that acknowledges, if anything, that the guest is not entirely ignorant. Vina gives a barely perceptible smile.

  “Rusty—” she puts in while she has the chance. “Rusty, perhaps we can convince our guest to stay longer—”

  “Of course he’ll stay—it’s not as if he has to rush off to work in the morning,” declares Rusty too glibly, then turns to show a more reasonable face to Diamond: “Stay a few days with us. Find out how we live in the Midwest.”

  “Stay the week, please,” begs Vina.

  She has lost some of the poise that so charmed him last night; but meanwhile she has revealed a side of herself no less compelling, in that it is intimate and friendly and vulnerable.

  “All right, I’ll stay tomorrow also but not a day more,” he relents and could kick himself for yielding so easily.

  Vina sees the look in his eyes and says teasingly, “Tomorrow, at least, to start with.”

  “Only tomorrow,” he says firmly.

  “Let Raja decide,” Rusty says, observing the exchange indulgently. “You should meet Raja anyway, he’ll tell you when you should go.”

  “Who’s Raja?” Is there a dog here he’s missed, who influences the household, or perhaps a resident ghost?

  “You will find out tomorrow. Now we have to go out for groceries—let’s go, Diamond.”

  “No—let him rest,” Vina tells him. “You go by yourself—or take Shireen.”

  Diamond thanks her with a look.

  “I know,” she says, putting things away, “you can have a bit too much of Rusty. He’s a darling, really.”

  She goes and puts on a selection of Indian film songs.

  “We’re going to have an Indian evening—music, biryani, laapsi, kulfi for dessert, and a movie—an oldie. What says you to that?”

  “Sounds terrific.”

  He goes to his basement room and lies down on his back, wondering how he will extricate himself from the tight embrace he has recklessly walked into. Somewhat delicately. He doesn’t want to hurt the couple. How familiar he’s become with them in such a short time. That’s disconcerting. Is he the one hungering for closeness? Perhaps it’s they who have taken pity on him. He’s utterly alone, after all, and drifting like a sea rat. There’s nothing, nowhere to return to. His life has gone up in flames.

  —You know I loved you, Di.

  Her plea. She was frightened.

  At first it was the recurring colds. Then there appeared the boil on her thigh, the first external sign, grim as a death’s head to the knowing. It’s not related to HIV, he murmured, when she showed it to him. It must be, she whimpered. Shh, he carried her to bed, put her to sleep. And how many more times of that, as the body yielded up one defence then another, a fortress whose doors had suddenly turned to jelly … and the rats advanced for the feed. She repulsed him at times, to his horror, and attracted him at others when he saw her as she had been. I would have wished the same for me, he told himself, after all that time together, all the young days we gave each other. I would have liked—not demanded—the same, someone to bathe and clean me, feed and change me, battle my depression, play me music and even sing, hold me through the agony of pain and put me to sleep, as the body quakes and breaks and screams. A complete marriage, through thick and thin, sin and forgiveness, sickness and decay. Is this what it means, through sickness and health, she asked once pathetically, it’s so not fair; and he replied, yes, that’s what it means to be married and to love, we are for each other. There was no religious dividend, no reward in afterlife that goaded him, there was just that sense of duty, in giving dignity to his partner when the moment demanded. We never bargain for this kind of duty, so when it comes, grab it, it gives some meaning to life. Finally, when it was really impossible to look after her, when the medications were multiple and constant yet producing little hope, he took her—carried her—to the hospital ward. It was then that her parents came and told him, now let her be ours. The next day she died. They cremated her, took the ashes back to New York.

  He decides to go out for a walk.

  The house is built on a wooded hillside and is the last one on a road that heads straight out and up from the local hospital at the edge of town. All t
he houses are on the same side of the road. A little further up, the road turns to the right and crests before descending to meet the highway exit for Greenfield. The area has the spook-iness of a housing development abruptly halted, a town expansion abandoned and forgotten.

  As Diamond watches the traffic on the highway from the road crest, he sees Vina walking toward him at a brisk pace.

  “It’s a good walk,” she says when she reaches him, panting lightly. “People ski here in the winter, and do all kinds of winter sport.”

  They go back together, at a casual pace. She asks to see, and he shows her a picture of Susan that he still carries in his wallet. She looks at it without comment. As they approach the house he asks her, “Where do they burn the cross—the Klan or whoever they are?”

  She takes him to a clearing diagonally across from the house; it shows evidence of occupation by builders not long ago—a mound of abandoned sand, a few bricks, bits of PVC piping, an empty reel of electrical cord.

  “They’ve come twice,” she tells him. “They parked here on the road and came out of their trucks wearing white hoods. We thought they looked funny at first, and there must be a mistake. It looked like a Halloween night. But then they stood facing the house, and making strange sounds—hooting and howling—and filthy, abusive comments. We were terrified. The second time they brought out a tall white cross….”

  “Have they harassed other non-whites in the area?”

  “No. Only us. It has to do with Elvis. You should ask Rusty. We hope they’ll stop, get tired or something. It’s driving us—and him especially—crazy.”

  “And the police—what did they say?”

  “By the time they finished questioning us on the phone, the hoods had gone.”

  “When was the last time they came—these hoods?”

  “Over two months ago.”

  III.

  Rustam Mehta, shaking uncontrollably, begins stamping a foot and mouthing a stream of obscenities he cannot be quite conscious of, as he stands glaring out the picture window at the spectacle taking place outside. The drapes were overlooked earlier and are open. A helpless, tearful Vina hovers beside her husband, unable to calm him.