by Akhil Sharma
“Of course, sahib,” the waiter said, and I knew he would want a tip.
I saw Mrs. Chauduri moving around the veranda. She was talking and eating a samosa from a little plate and looking as if she could live forever. “Hello! Mrs. Chauduri,” I shouted at her. I towed Asha behind me as I moved through the crowd. Mrs. Chauduri was wearing a purple sari that made her look like an eggplant. “What a nice sari,” I said, feeling the slight anger of sycophancy and the sly joy of lying. “I hope you are better.” She had had her second breast removed recently and I wondered whether her husband was unhappy about this or whether he found some strange pleasure at seeing a scarred woman beneath him.
“It is as God wills,” she answered, shrugging. “I have to live for my husband and sons.” Whenever she talked of her illness, her voice became soft and slightly vain. The voice made me think of how when Mrs. Chauduri was a school principal she nearly ended up in jail for secretly selling ten thousand rupees’ worth of her science department’s mercury.
“God is only testing you, Mrs. Chauduri. I am sure you will be fine.” She nodded and sipped her cold drink. I noticed that I was slightly aroused at the idea of what her chest, creased by the surgery, must look like. This was the first time in several months that I had had such feelings.
The waiter came with my whiskey. “Reward, sir, reward,” he said. “You are rich. I am poor.”
I avoided his eyes and praised Mrs. Chauduri for her bravery. Then I introduced Asha and asked, “Have you seen Mr. Mishra?” She hadn’t. Mr. Mishra didn’t like Mr. Gupta and I was glad to know that he had been brave enough not to come.
Mrs. Chauduri moved closer to me. “Mr. Gupta’s son is passed out drunk. That’s why he isn’t out shaking hands. And they can’t show the girl without him.” Noticing my surprise at her bitter voice, she added, “The girl’s family is here. Why should their friends not get to see their daughter?” After Mr. Bajwa was charged with corruption, Mrs. Chauduri should have become Mr. Gupta’s representative, but she had been passed over because she was a woman. Now she was always presenting examples of injustice against women.
Asha looked bored, so we left Mrs. Chauduri and wandered through the crowd. I have no resistance to alcohol and the second drink pushed me into drunkenness. The world and my mind appeared to move at two different speeds. When I turned my head, the people before me also shifted. I introduced Asha to several people. “Isn’t she beautiful?” I would challenge them. Asha smiled when I demanded praise for her. I felt as if I could do anything and it wouldn’t matter.
I ordered another drink and moved with Asha into the room where the buffet was laid out. “Oh!” she said. The walls were lined with tables covered by trays laden with food. On one side of the room there were ice chests full of ice cream. As we moved around the tables, we counted the cheese dishes. Nine, not including desserts. Asha filled her plate so high, food overflowed it and dripped down her wrist. At first I felt embarrassed by her greed; then I saw a fat woman with a ring on every finger and a heavy gold necklace picking cubes of cheese out of a tray.
Asha and I stood in a corner of the room and ate. It was very hot and sweat kept slipping into my eyes. But the food was so good that neither of us wanted to leave the room. I ate only a little bit, but chewed every mouthful for a long time. “Don’t eat so much that you have no space for ice cream,” I said to Asha.
She laughed and said, “Don’t worry.” Asha went back for a second plate. Her blouse was tucked in and I noticed how tiny her waist was. I put my plate down. I wanted to live a long time.
In the middle of the second plate, Asha suddenly turned pale. I took her to the bathroom to vomit. Then I got her a bottle of Campa Cola to rinse her mouth with. “Spit it out,” I said, cupping the back of her head in my hand, “you’re rich tonight.”
I ordered another whiskey and drank it standing beside Asha while she ate plate after plate of ice cream. There were colored sprinkles for the ice cream. “Clown dandruff,” Asha called them at some point. The strength of her imagination made her appear even more valuable. I put one hand on her shoulder and pulled her next to my leg. I was so drunk I expected to feel nauseous.
At some point Mr. Gupta entered the room, leading Mr. Maurya behind him. Mr. Maurya wore a plain white kurta pajama that made his black skin appear shiny I noticed that he kept pulling up his left sleeve to better display a heavy gold watch. “Then just make your mouth sweet before going,” Mr. Gupta was saying. I smiled in preparation for shaking Mr. Maurya’s hand and felt myself getting nervous. I had known Mr. Maurya long before Mr. Gupta met him, when Mr. Maurya’s only business was collecting used paper and turning it into bags.
“No, no,” Mr. Maurya said, his voice loud and easy. “My doctor says I have to eat very simple things. No salt or sugar.” When Mr. Maurya’s eyes swept the room, they snagged on mine. He smiled and turned his attention back to Mr. Gupta. I felt myself swelling with rage. I had been the one who got Mr. Maurya appointments with school principals so that he could convince them to sell him their paper.
“One gulab jamun, then,” Mr. Gupta said.
“It’s only just, Mr. Maurya,” I called out, “that after eating so much all our lives, our bodies stop letting us eat.” My words were slurred and I couldn’t even tell if they all left my mouth. Mr. Gupta glanced coldly at me. Sisterfucker! I thought, I’m the one who can go to jail. “Mr. Maurya, I hear you’re the biggest textbook publisher in Delhi now.”
“I didn’t see you, Mr. Karan,” Mr. Maurya said.
I walked up to him and shook his hand. “As long as one of us sees the other.” Mr. Maurya was a small man. I put my hand on his shoulder and left it there. “Why don’t you call me anymore?”
“You’re drunk, Mr. Karan,” Mr. Maurya said. For some reason I had expected Mr. Maurya to pretend I wasn’t drunk. His words made me realize that I was unimportant.
Mr. Maurya took my hand off his shoulder and held it between his two hands. He looked into my eyes. I knew he thought me a buffoon, and I knew then that the decision to have me murdered would involve for him all the emotion of changing banks. “What I meant, sir,” I immediately said, “is that you should honor me with more work.” I backed away, nodding my head. “It was so nice to meet you again, sir.” I pulled Asha after me.
I walked out of the room and out of the house. My fright had made me almost sober. I stood at the edge of the road and tried to empty my head so that I could think. Asha was leaning quietly against me. I caressed her hair and taut neck to let her know that everything was all right, but her face remained pulled in. I knelt and kissed her cheeks and neck. Her body slowly relaxed. I hugged her and looked up. The moon was full, yellow, and so low it looked as if it were wedged between two roofs. It appeared helpless and mournful. I shivered with fright.
By the time we found an autorickshaw, the drunkenness had crawled back into me. Now it made me sad, not giddy. The recent embarrassment bobbed in and out of my consciousness and my stomach began turning. I wished I had drunk another whiskey.
There was little traffic on the road and soon we were out of Model Town and on the main road back to the Old Vegetable Market. It was nine-thirty, but already homeless people had placed their cots along the edges of the road. The grassy swaths of land which divide the road were spotted with the stoves and dung fires of more homeless people. I pulled Asha next to me. “Did you enjoy yourself?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Sit on my lap,” I said. I put my arm around her waist. I blew softly on her neck. “Tomorrow I’ll buy you some ice cream,” I said. Then I was quiet for a little while. “Our house is so sad. We should be happy. I don’t know why your mother wants to be so unhappy, but you and I can be happy.” I kissed her neck. “I love you, my little sweet mango, and I want you to have a happy childhood. Making your childhood happy is the last thing I want to do before I die.” Thinking of the nearness of my death, I felt my eyes tearing. “I wish I could watch you grow into a woman. Yo
u will be a beautiful woman.”
We got out of the autorickshaw and walked up our alley holding hands. There were no lights and we had to be careful not to step on dogs sleeping in the middle of the alley “Do you love me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I am such a sad bad man. Other than you no one loves me.” I began sobbing gently. I picked her up and held her for a moment. “You’re my little mango.” Asha also began crying. “I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I am a weak man.”
“I love you,” Asha said.
“But I am such a sad bad man.”
I put her down and entered the courtyard of our compound. People were sitting on cots playing cards. The English news was playing on televisions. Crying all the way, we climbed the narrow stairs to the second-story gallery.
When Anita opened the door and saw us, her face flattened with alarm. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said. Asha stood crying softly beside me. “I began thinking of Radha and that made me sad. Asha is such a good girl she began crying with me.”
I left them and brushed my teeth and washed my face. I wished I had drunk more. I took off my pants and shirt, and wearing just my undershirt and undershorts, I went and sat on my cot and waited.
When Asha walked past my room, I told her to get me some water. She came into my room with a glass. She was wearing a purple nightgown that went to her ankles. Her eyes were red. I was excited and even happy, but the alcohol kept me slightly removed from the moment. I took Asha’s wrist in one hand as she handed me the water. “Such a good girl you are,” I said. I took a sip and put the glass on the floor and pulled her toward me. I turned her to face away from me and made her stand between my legs. I kissed her neck lightly and placed my erection against the small of her back. Asha’s body was relaxed, as if she didn’t sense anything wrong. “I love you,” I said. I brushed my penis lightly against her. Nervousness and excitement rubbed with each other. I took an earlobe between my lips. “You’re my little sun-ripened mango.”
Suddenly Anita was in the doorway with her toothbrush clenched in one hand. For a second I panicked. I felt as if I had been kicked in the chest, and there was a rushing in my ears. But then I thought, Anita couldn’t see anything. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was not naked. Asha didn’t know what I was doing. All I was doing was touching her, and without Asha knowing, I couldn’t be doing something wrong. Anita couldn’t see. I continued leaning over Asha’s shoulder. “What a nice daughter you have,” I said to Anita.
There was no emotion on Anita’s face as she stared at me. “What are you doing?” she asked me.
“Giving Nanaji water,” Asha said.
She stared at us a moment and then motioned for Asha to come to her. “Brush your teeth.” Asha left me and went past her mother into the common room. Anita stayed in the doorway. I wondered whether she remembered. How could she remember after decades of silence? She kept looking at me. “I’m drunk,” I said in case she remembered.
Anita stepped out of the doorway and out of my sight.
TWO
Pitaji is dead. Asha and I are on the roof. The sky is ashy from the city’s trapped lights. It is three in ashy from the city’s trapped lights. It is three in the morning, or later. Moisture is finally collecting on the sheets. I am sitting on my cot. I have not slept at all since I saw Pitaji dead. I am staring at my daughter, because otherwise Pitaji appears before me. Asha’s hands are on her hips above the white sheet that reaches her waist.
On a nearby roof a woman coughs and spits. Asha rolls onto her side so her back is to me. A few months ago, Pitaji’s ankles turned black for lack of blood. Before, I had seen this as a sign of death and been happy. Since he died, I’ve been thinking of the ankles, like a child’s socks, and wanting to wrap my head in my arms.
Pitaji appears against the night. He is on his stomach, lit by the summer sun coming through the common room. His eyes are turned toward where I stood in the doorway; blood covers his chin from biting his tongue; one arm is buried beneath him; the other is draped over the edge of the cot. I try peering through this. The image does not fade. I close my eyes. He is inside my lids.
I wish Rajinder were here to say, “Don’t think too much.” Once Rajinder decided to put something out of his mind he did it. If I had loved him or even let him hold my attention, perhaps I would have become more like him. Then the last year and a half might have been completely different. If I had been more like Rajinder, I would have been able to maintain the agreement between Pitaji and me. Instead, when he broke it, I took revenge.
I move to Asha’s cot. She does not wake. I try to lie beside her. Half my body is on the cot’s wood frame. Rajinder was necessary for Asha to be born. Even when I am angry with her, I always think there is a reason for her to be in the world, and for me. I may be stupid, but Asha was born from me.
I did love Rajinder once, through an afternoon’s end, the whole of an evening, into a night. I was only twenty-two when I fell in love. It was easy then to think that even love was within my power. Six months married, suddenly awake from a short deep sleep in love with my husband for the first time, I lay in bed that June afternoon, looking out the window at the swiftly advancing gray clouds, believing anything is possible.
We were living in a small flat on the roof of a three-story house in Defense Colony. Rajinder signed the lease a week before our wedding. Two days after we married, he brought me to the flat. Although it was cold, I wore no sweater over my pink sari. I knew that, with my thick eyebrows and broad nose, I must try especially hard to be appealing.
The sun filled the living room through a window that took up half a wall. Rajinder went in first. In the center of the room was a low plywood table with a thistle broom on top. Three plastic folding chairs lay collapsed in the corner. I followed a few steps behind. The room was a white rectangle.
“We can put the TV there,” Rajinder said softly, pointing to the right corner of the living room. He stood before the window. Rajinder was slightly overweight. I knew he wore sweaters that were large for him, to hide his stomach. But they suggested humbleness. The thick black frames of his glasses, his old-fashioned mustache thin as a scratch, the hairline giving way, all created an impression of thoughtfulness. “The sofa in front of the window.”
I followed Rajinder into the bedroom. The two rooms were exactly alike. “There, the bed,” Rajinder said, placing it with a wave against the wall across from the window. He spoke as though he were describing what was already there. “The fridge we can put right next to it,” at the foot of the bed. Both were part of my dowry. Whenever he looked at me, I said yes and nodded my head.
From the roof, a little after eleven, I watched Rajinder drive away on his scooter. He was going to my parents’ flat in the Old Vegetable Market. My dowry was stored there. There was nothing for me to do while he was gone. I wandered around the roof. Defense Colony is composed of rows of pale three- and four-storied buildings. There was a small park edged with eucalyptus trees behind our house.
Rajinder returned two hours later with his older brother, Ashok. They had borrowed a yellow van to carry the dowry. It took three trips to bring the TV, the sofa, the fridge, the mixer, the stainless-steel dishes. Each time they left, I wanted them never to return. Whenever they pulled up outside, Ashok pressed the horn, which played “Jingle Bells.” With his muscular forearms, Ashok reminded me of Pitaji’s brothers, who, Ma claimed, beat their wives.
On the first trip they brought back two VIP suitcases that my mother had packed with my clothes. I was cold, so when they left, I went into the bedroom to put on something warmer. My hands were trembling by then. When I swallowed, my throat felt scraped. Standing there naked in the room gray with dust and the light like cold clear water, I felt sad, lonely, excited to be in a place where no one knew me. In the cold, I touched my stomach, my breasts, the inside of my thighs. Afterward I felt lonelier. I put on a salwar kameez.
Rajinder did not notice I
had changed. I swept the rooms while they were gone. I stacked the kitchen shelves with the stainless-steel dishes, saucers, spoons that had come as gifts. Rajinder brought all the gifts except the bed, which was too big to carry. It was raised to the roof by pulleys the next day. They were able to bring up the mattress, though. I was glad to see it. Sadness made me sleepy.
We did not eat lunch. In the evening I made rotis on a kerosene stove. The gas canisters had not come yet. There was no lightbulb in the kitchen. I had only the stove’s blue flame to see by. The icy wind swirled around my feet. Nearly thirteen years later I can still remember that wind. We ate in the living room. Rajinder and Ashok spoke loudly of the farm, gasoline prices, politics in Haryana, Indira Gandhi’s government. I spoke once, saying that I liked Indira Gandhi. Ashok said that was because I was a Delhi woman who wanted to see women in power.
Ashok left after dinner. For the first time since the wedding there wasn’t anyone else nearby. Our voices were so respectful we might have been in mourning. Rajinder took me silently in the bedroom. Our mattress was before the window. A full moon peered in. I had hoped that this third time together my body might not be frightened. But when he got on top of me, my arms automatically crossed themselves over my chest. Rajinder had to push them aside. Then I lay looking at the heavyhearted tulips in the window grille. Once Rajinder was asleep, my body slowly loosened.
Three months earlier, when our parents had introduced us, I did not think we would marry. Rajinder’s ambiguous features across the restaurant table held nothing significant. Ashok on one side of him, his mother on the other were more distinctive. I sat between my parents. I did not expect to marry someone particularly handsome. I was neither pretty nor talented. But I had believed I would recognize the person I would marry.
Twice before, my parents had introduced me to men, contacted through the matrimonial section of the Sunday Times of India. One received a job offer in Bombay. Ma did not want to send me that far away with someone we did not yet know. The other, who drove a Honda motorcycle, was handsome, but he had lied about his income.
