“Krypton,” Krishna murmured, handing her a bag of warm prasad.
Vimla glanced up at him. A conspiratorial smile bloomed on her face. “Kr 36,” she replied without hesitation. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted the prasad and in that touch sprang the unforgettable pulse of her liveliness.
Krishna looked up at his mother’s drawn face. He couldn’t tell her this now. No explanation, no apology, could undo the fact that he’d covertly pursued a romance and blackened the Govind name.
“Maaa-yaaaa! Oh gosh, Maya!”
Krishna sat up straight. “What the—?”
“Maya Govind! I sorry, gyul. I so sorry!”
Krishna and Maya leaped to their feet and peered over the veranda. There was Gloria Ramnath lumbering toward them, wheezing audibly and waving her arms in the air.
Maya flapped her handkerchief at Gloria from above. “Shh! What you carrying on so for, Glory?” She nudged Krishna toward the stairs. “Go and open the gates for that silly woman before she wake up the neighbours.”
When Krishna let her in, Gloria threw herself against his chest so that he stumbled backward. “This go fall on your head, son!” she wailed. “But I know you is not to blame. Is that hot-mouth Vimla who cause all of we grief.”
Maya’s hand flew to her mouth; she was appalled. Gloria was a sopping mess. Her dress was plastered to her body with sweat, tears streamed down her cheeks and snot pooled in the hollow above her upper lip. “Gloria.” Maya stuffed her damp handkerchief into Gloria’s hand. “Hush your mouth, nuh, gyul!” Maya’s eyes, red from crying, flashed angrily. “You must not have any shame yourself, coming to my house at this ungodly hour to meddle in we business!”
Even now, Krishna thought, Maya was determined to salvage her status in the district. She would not allow the likes of Gloria Ramnath to trumpet her downfall in a show of put-on grief.
Gloria gasped like she’d been slapped and peeled herself off Krishna’s chest. “Pundit Anand Govind collapse in the mandir,” she sobbed. Gloria brushed the soup of bodily fluid from her face with a pudgy, ringed hand and stared back at them like a child, chastised and heartbroken. For a moment Maya and Krishna stood dumbfounded.
“He look dead. I think he gone and dead,” Gloria said. And then she burst into fresh tears.
Krishna’s heart was in his throat. It beat so intensely his whole body seemed to judder, or maybe that was the car flying down Kiskadee Trace, endlessly uneven and pockmarked. Gloria blubbered on about her morning puja, how she had discovered Pundit Anand sprawled pitifully across the mandir floor; her son in Port of Spain, although a jeweller, could revive Pundit Anand if only he lived in Chance. Maya listened to all this with the fingertips of one hand pressed firmly into her lips and the other hand gripping the door handle until her fist turned white.
The district went by in a whir of houses painted in pinks, yellows and blues. Brushwood and flowers stirred sleepily in the mid-morning breeze. Cows and goats grazed their way through fields, lifting their heads just briefly as the car rattled by. Laundry snapped on makeshift clotheslines. Palm fronds splayed like fingers against the sky and filtered the blazing sun. Krishna flew past Vimla’s house and the cane field that was their meeting place, past Minty’s house—Minty, their faithful lookout until the very end—and over the bridge that once sheltered all three from an afternoon of rain. The mandir stood in the distance. Krishna recalled watching Vimla walk through the door at her mother’s side Sunday after Sunday on the pretense of devotion. These memories, once full of perilous joy, now choked him with guilt. He couldn’t help but think every meeting, every small betrayal, had led him closer to this fatal moment.
“Krishna!”
Krishna glanced sideways at his mother, who leaned on the dashboard, squinting against the sun’s glare.
“Slow the car down before you kill your father!” she exclaimed.
Krishna was about to ask her if she was crazy, when he made out Anand standing in the middle of the road, looking as menacing as ever. Krishna hit the brakes and the car swerved before screeching to a halt. The smell of burned rubber floated on the sultry air.
Pundit Anand marched around the car and slammed his fist on the roof. “Who tell you to drive my car?” he asked.
“I thought you dead in the mandir,” Krishna answered, and he knew how ludicrous he sounded. He was aware of Gloria Ramnath slouching against the back seat and trying, unsuccessfully, to appear inconspicuous.
“You can’t kill me so easy,” Pundit Anand said. “No matter how hard you try.”
Krishna’s shaking hands fell away from the steering wheel and into his lap. “I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
“True?” Pundit Anand arched a dishevelled, grey eyebrow. “You could have fooled me. You nearly ain’t stop the car.” He opened the door. “Get out.”
“Come, Anand, let we go home,” Maya coaxed. She glanced in the back seat at Gloria, who was observing the intimate family moment with unabashed interest.
“Not yet. I have business to discuss with Headmaster Roop G. Kapil,” Anand said. He rubbed his palms together then clasped them behind his back.
Krishna caught the spiteful shadow that crossed his father’s face and now he found his guilt forgotten. “What? What business you have with Headmaster Roop G. Kapil?” Although he suspected what mischief his father was up to and worried that Vimla would suffer for it.
Pundit Anand scowled at his son. “Krishna, you didn’t hear me tell you to get out the car?” A vein throbbed in his neck.
Krishna abided, his gaze as cold as Anand’s.
Anand slid into the driver’s seat, cranked the ignition and looked over his shoulder. “Good morning, Gloria.” His moustache lifted and revealed his most virtuous smile.
Gloria sat forward. “Baba, I was so frightened when I see you lie down in the mandir so.”
Anand nodded. “I was in a deep meditation, Glory. Did you call for me?”
“I did, Baba!” Gloria said. She gripped Maya’s headrest to pull herself closer. “And when you ain’t answer, I thought Bhagwan take you for Heself.”
“Not yet.” Anand turned in his seat to face Gloria. “It is my dharma, my duty, to serve in this world until at least eighty. Chance needs me—good-good people like you need me. Ain’t?”
Gloria’s nods were so vigorous she crushed her chins against her neck and made still more folds. “You know, Baba, you is the best pundit in Chance and in the whole world. I know I could always count on you.” She wiped the perspiration beading at her hairline with the back of a hand and continued. “Some people say you too greedy for a pundit.”
Pundit Anand frowned and his moustache drooped to his stubbled chin.
“And some people say you does be sending money to Venezuela steady, like you mix up in some kind of drug activities.”
Maya groaned audibly in the front seat.
“But I never believe that kind of gossip, Baba. You is my pundit. You are God’s gift!”
Pundit Anand cleared his throat and paused, and Krishna knew it took all his resolve not to ask the names of the gossipers. “Thank you,” Anand finally said. “I go drop you home now, Gloria. And tomorrow morning first thing, I go do your puja. I wouldn’t forget.” His smile was tight, but Gloria didn’t seem to notice.
She beamed at Pundit Anand. “Yes, Baba. Thank you so much, Baba.”
Anand glanced up at his son through the window. “And you—find yourself home.”
Krishna wanted to protest, but Maya’s eyes pleaded against it. And then there was Anand, who, despite his malice, looked so desperate and haggard hunched behind the steering wheel Krishna couldn’t bring himself to disobey him yet again. He turned on his heel and headed for home, realizing it did not matter what he did now: someone he loved would be hurt. As he strode past Vimla’s house with his head down, Krishna murmured an apology for the part he’d played in her undoing and for the part his father would play to ensure her defeat. The wind carried his words into the treet
ops, leaving Krishna feeling more helpless than ever. With every step closer to home, Krishna knew that however torn, however heartbroken he felt, for Vimla it would be much, much worse.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil
Monday August 5, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Vimla and Chandani arrived at Saraswati Hindu School at 8:30 a.m. They immediately spotted Headmaster Roop G. Kapil sitting under a tamarind tree, a notebook lying in his lap and a pen poised over the open page. He wore a crisp, pale-blue shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a pair of brown trousers, rolled up to the ankles to avoid the dust. Hooked and swaying from a lower branch was the headmaster’s brown blazer, and in the blazer breast pocket a pale-blue handkerchief to match his shirt. He read his notes aloud, crossing lines out and scribbling additions into the margins. Every time he modified his work, he went back to the beginning and started anew.
Chandani smoothed her hands over her hair and touched the thick knot at her nape as she neared the headmaster. “What he jacket doing swinging in the tree like a howler monkey?” she mumbled.
Vimla didn’t answer. Her mouth was dry. Her palms were damp. She knew in her heart what Headmaster Roop G. Kapil had called her here to say and all she wanted was to go back home and crawl into her lumpy bed.
“Good morning, Headmaster,” Chandani said as they approached the tamarind tree. Vimla watched Chandani, in her peach dress, smile sweetly at the headmaster as though there was great peace in her soul.
Headmaster jumped and his notebook toppled into the grass at his feet. “Sita-Ram and good morning.” He busied himself with tucking his pen behind his ear, unfolding his pant cuffs and unhooking his blazer from the nearby branch. “I suppose is eight thirty already,” he said, slipping the blazer on. He whipped his notebook off the ground, dusted it off and adjusted his handkerchief so that it peeked out a little higher from his breast pocket. “Come, come”—he gestured to the pair—“let we chat in my office.”
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil kept his eyes fixed forward and walked the twenty feet to the school doors in silence. Vimla watched his thin brown face out of the corner of her eye, noticing how he tensed and relaxed his angular jaw as he went. A nervous tic? She couldn’t be sure. She had only ever seen Headmaster composed and confident. As he drew near to the door, his greying hair, feathery as a child’s, fluttered in the breeze and fell over the left lens of his gold-rimmed glasses. He stole a glance at Chandani behind the veil of his hair before brushing it away.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil unlocked the school doors and led them down a long corridor. Vimla knew the way well. She had sat in each of the seven classrooms along that hallway throughout her primary school days, written the solutions to math problems on every blackboard in the school. The classroom doors had been left open so that sunshine streamed in through the windows and spilled into the hallway, lighting the route to the headmaster’s office. As she trailed behind her mother, Vimla inhaled the smell of chalk dust and felt a sudden longing to slip into an empty classroom and sit at one of the long wooden desks made for three.
They arrived at the end of the corridor, where Headmaster Roop G. Kapil’s name was etched on a nameplate beside the door. He jiggled a key in the lock and pushed the heavy door open. “Please sit,” he said, as he made his way around the oversized desk.
The thick oppressive heat pushed Vimla into a chair. She looked around while the headmaster retrieved his pen from behind his ear and flipped through his notebook. The bookshelf, mounted high on the green wall behind the desk, sagged with dozens of texts arranged in alphabetical order. The spines had faded under the unrelenting sun pouring in through the lattice windows, rendering them worn and weathered. A silver fan stood next to the headmaster’s chair. Unlike the books, it appeared new and shiny, and Vimla wished he would turn it on. She could feel pinpricks of sweat at the back of her neck and the clamminess in her hands seemed to spread across her entire body. In those excruciating moments while she waited for the headmaster to speak, Vimla felt like she was wilting in her chair. She watched his face, leaning forward every time he silently mouthed something or opened and closed his lips. It was if he were rehearsing his dismissal speech right in front of her. Vimla wanted to grab his shirt collar and shake the terrible news out of him. At least then she could put the agony of waiting behind her and deal solely with the embarrassment of her many losses since Krishna.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil cleared his throat and began in the loud voice he used to address school assemblies on the front lawn. “As you know, Saraswati Hindu School holds a high standard of education for the children in this district.” He folded his hands over his notebook, looped his thumbs clockwise and then counterclockwise.
Vimla jiggled her knees until Chandani’s firm hand stilled them. Chandani sat on the edge of her seat, her feet flat on the ground, her back erect, her chin raised. “I agree,” she said. “That is why I send Vimla here.” A syrupy smile coated the lie; they all knew the next closest Hindu school was in a different district.
Headmaster wet his lips, tensed his jaw and relaxed it again. “I called you both here to discuss the teaching offer I made Vimla after she passed she A Levels—”
“Is a real honour, Headmaster,” Chandani said.
Vimla stole a curious glance at her mother. This wasn’t the same woman who had railed through the night over Vimla’s carelessness. There was something different. It was in the tilt of her head as the headmaster spoke and the curve at the corners of her lips. It was in the unfamiliar tone of her voice, neither impatient nor self-righteous. It was in the way she leaned forward, a subtle hinge of the hips, as if she were hanging on his every word. Vimla wondered what trick Chandani was playing on Headmaster Roop G. Kapil.
A weak smile wavered on the headmaster’s lips. He shifted in his chair and sighed. “Mrs. Narine, at the time of the offer—”
Chandani clapped her hands to her chest and gasped as though she’d just remembered something. “Headmaster, you see Vimla name in the paper?” She beamed across the desk at him, her eyes twinkling. “I sorry I forget to bring it for you.”
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
Chandani stroked Vimla’s hair and her fingers snagged in a tangle of curls. “We so proud of she. So, so proud.”
Vimla clasped and unclasped her damp hands, wondering if there was a shred of truth to anything her mother said. Tentative seeds of hope stirred in her belly. She wrapped her arms around them to keep them safe.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil swallowed and tugged at his collar with a ringed finger. Sweat beaded at his sideburns. He was melting in his blazer.
“And you know, Headmaster,” Chandani began again, widening her smile.
Headmaster Roop G. Kapil held his hand up and dropped his gaze to his notebook. “Mrs. Narine …” Resolve and weariness tightened his voice. “After some deliberation, we have decided to withdraw our offer for the teaching vacancy in September due to Vimla’s recent indiscretions.”
Vimla watched the headmaster exhale slowly, forgetting to breathe herself. For a moment, no one spoke. Vimla saw Chandani’s eyes narrow, her face darken, and she knew that all her mother’s false sweetness had fallen away.
“Roopy, who is we?” Chandani’s voice was clipped.
Vimla’s stomach lurched. Had her mother just addressed Headmaster Roop G. Kapil as Roopy? She looked at the man whose very presence frightened the school children into obedience. As his face turned red, a droplet of sweat trickled the length of his sideburn and down his chin. “When I said ‘we,’ I meant the school.” He removed his blue handkerchief and mopped his face.
Chandani sprang to her feet. “Who is ‘the school,’ Roopy? Cut the bullshit, nuh, man!” She leaned over the desk so that her face was inches from the headmaster’s. “Ain’t you mean Pundit Anand decide to withdraw the offer?”
Headmaster pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his nose and looked away
. “Chand,” he said, rolling his chair back a few inches.
Vimla’s eyes grew wide. Chand?
“People talking about Vimla all over the district. How can we—the school—let she teach here? The parents go get vexed. Think of Saraswati Hindu School’s reputation.”
Vimla was startled by the imploring quake in Headmaster Roop G. Kapil’s voice. Chandani pointed a finger at Vimla. “Is people talking about she alone?”
Headmaster lowered his eyes and fiddled with the pen lying across his notebook.
“Ain’t people saying that Vimla get catch with Krishna, Pundit Anand Govind’s son? And Pundit Anand Govind have plenty influence at Saraswati Hindu School, ain’t so?”
Headmaster started to stammer a response, but Chandani wouldn’t hear it. “How a man like you become a headmaster?” she demanded.
Vimla gasped. “Ma!” She grabbed her mother’s reedy arm.
Chandani shook Vimla’s grasp off. “You could never make up your own mind, Roopy,” she said. The veins in her neck throbbed. “You did always rely on the opinions in books, the advice of other people and that damn, stupid notebook of yours for everything.” She picked up the notebook and hurled it at the lattice windows.
Vimla covered her mouth, horrified. She felt faint in the suffocating office.
Headmaster whisked his notebook off the floor and buttoned his blazer over the perspiration seeping through his shirt in patches. “Mrs. Narine, I am sorry you are upset. Perhaps Vimla could find a next opportunity elsewhere. Plenty universities go want she. Perhaps something abroad? Canada? England? We wish you luck, Vimla.” He looked directly into her eyes for the first time and she saw sadness not unlike her own flicker behind his gold-rimmed glasses.
Rum Shop Blues
Monday August 5, 1974
CHANCE, TRINIDAD
Om trundled up the side of the road with his head lowered and his fleshy arms swinging through the humidity. He puffed as he went, mopping the perspiration from his sideburns with his hands. He had been walking only a few minutes and already the off-white T-shirt he wore was damp and turning ochre under his armpits. Om could see, out of the corners of his eyes, people watching him as he went. He pretended he didn’t notice his neighbours, resisted the natural urge to raise his hand and call out to them. Instead he thought of Chandani sprawled in resolute defeat across their bed, and Vimla attending to her numerous chores with forlorn eyes. He couldn’t take it anymore; he’d had to leave. They had driven him away with their misery and their scandal, and it was their fault he was here. Om turned off the road and lumbered into Lal’s Rum Shop.
Nothing Like Love Page 5
