“Send him to your sister,” Mom said. “You can’t be expected to take all the responsibility for this—for this—!”
We were gathered at the dinner table, all of us in our regular chairs, even Papa was there, the unicorn bib, now covered in turmeric-colored stains, tied inexpertly by Dad around his neck.
After Papa had fallen asleep that afternoon, I eased the cigarette out of his mouth and left him there, alone on the bathroom floor, hoping he would sleep until Mom returned. I spent the afternoon walking along the edge of the highway, where the roar of tires on blacktop drowned my thoughts. Mom did find him. His hand was resting where he’d left it. I could hear her from my room, shouting at Dad when she told him. “He was doing that—in his own shit!” I took up a position at the railing where I could listen more easily. “He always hated you,” Mom shouted, “and now he’s come here so he can hate you properly.” Dad was silent for a long minute and I crept down along the stairway, hoping to catch his words.
“I know,” he said finally in a soft, defeated voice.
“So—?” Mom said.
Dad walked to the sideboard and poured himself a drink.
“He can’t hurt anyone now. He’s an old man and he was never much of anything, even when he was young. He’s come here to die. We should let him.”
I stole back up the stairs, full of remorse, for Dad, for Papa, for all of us, for our sad, cowardly family. I’d be the one with courage, I decided, I wouldn’t flinch. My name that night was Hecate, three-headed goddess. Dog, snake and horse.
“I can’t send him to my sister,” Dad said, responding to Mom’s demand, as we sat there at dinner. “She has a family.” Around us, at the table, we were surrounded on all sides by the great empty cavern of the house.
Johnny whispered as they talked. “Douche bag,” he said.
“And you don’t?” Mom said. “You don’t have a family?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Dad said.
“What did he do?” I asked. Even though I knew what had happened, I wanted to hear the version they’d give me.
“Nothing,” Dad said.
“Asscrack,” Johnny whispered.
“Then what way did you mean it?” Mom said.
“You’re twisting my words.”
“What did he do?” I said, louder this time.
“Shit licker,” Johnny whispered.
“Nothing!” Dad said, suddenly very loud. “The old bastard never did a thing in his life!”
We all fell into a momentary silence. Even Johnny stopped whispering.
Papa took hold of his plate in one hand and with a wild grip held it high. His stare moved violently from Dad to me and back again. Finally, he let the plate fall and it crashed with a loud thud on the floor and shattered. Warm dal spilled out across the carpet.
Dad closed his eyes.
“I’ll clean it up,” I offered.
Mom threw an arm out and gripped my wrist to stop me from jumping to my feet. “No. I want your father to. This is his problem.”
“I’ll do it after we eat,” Dad said.
“I just meant today, Dad,” I explained. “Not before.”
“Oh—.” Dad stood and poured himself another drink and returned to the table.
“But he was a soldier,” I said. “That’s something.”
“He wasn’t even in the army. Not the real army. He was a mechanic. Or something. I don’t know. He never told me.”
“That’s still something,” I said.
Dad groaned. “He never killed anyone. Not on the battlefield. He doesn’t even know how to fire a gun.”
I watched Papa silently. His lower lip was curled in anger and now he looked at me, eyes filled with accusation.
“It’s very simple,” Mom said. “You pick up the telephone and you call your sister.”
“And say what?”
“He’s your father too. That’s what you say.”
“Cocksucker,” Johnny whispered.
“Nothing?” I said.
“What?” Dad said.
“He did nothing?”
“Yes. Except he got a medal once. I think. By accident. He saved someone by accident. He was very proud of it.”
“You tell her that he’s her father too,” Mom said. “You insist.”
“How?” I said.
“By accident,” Dad repeated.
“What kind of accident?”
“She won’t go for it,” Dad said, responding to Mom. “You know it and I know it. She won’t go for it.”
“Then make her,” Mom said.
“Cunt rag,” Johnny whispered.
“She’s a bitch,” Dad said. “There’s no way to make her do anything.”
“Bitch,” Johnny said, out loud this time.
“Johnny—!” Mom scolded.
“What—?” Johnny said.
“What kind of accident?” I said.
Dad turned to me. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“He was fixing a Jeep. Someone was under it. The Jeep fell and crushed the guy. He held the Jeep up while someone pulled him out.”
“With his own hands?”
“Yes. He was that strong once. I remember.”
“Are you going to call her or not?” Mom said.
“No,” Dad said.
“What kind of man are you?” Mom said.
Without warning, Papa formed a fist and began pounding the small table at his elbow. He raised his fist and brought it down and raised it and brought it down. All the while, he stared at me.
Dad waited a minute before he stood, finished his drink, and approached Papa from behind. The old man was pounding the table. Dad took hold of the fist and held it, suspended in midair. I could see Dad struggling under Papa’s dying strength. The old man’s muscles strained through his shirt, dense and round, and the veins on his knuckles were thick and discolored. Dad held fiercely on, his eyes shut, his mouth tight. When he released Papa’s hand, there were tears in his eyes.
Everyone was asleep when I emerged that night and padded silently along the upstairs carpet. The warm summer night echoed with the din of crickets in the yard. In Papa’s room, I switched the bathroom light on and left the door ajar so that his body was illuminated by an elongated rectangle spreading toward him. Standing at the end of the bed, I pulled the blanket down and off him. He was wearing a pajama suit, a red checked flannel. It was one of Dad’s.
“Papa . . .” I said. “Papa?”
He didn’t move. His breath came in short, staggered bursts, catching in his throat. Without his turban, thick strands of unruly hair spread across the pillow in a withered delta of white. He looked like an ancient, an old god finally at rest.
“I am Hecate,” I said. “I am the three-headed one.”
I lit a cigarette and dropped the match onto the carpet and stood there, smoking. He stirred at that. His chest heaved into life, his arms and legs, and his old eyes opened nervously, and finally his mouth, cracking apart like a rock roasted in the desert sun, searching for words he would never be able to utter.
I climbed onto the bed, moving slowly, and advanced gingerly along his legs until I was straddling his crotch. I leaned forward and began to unbutton his pajama top. His whole body tensed and he attempted to sit up. I pushed him back with a forceful nudge of my palm. His chest was a mass of hairs, a white forest, the skin veined and old and troubled. It moved up and down, not with any regular motion, but with a sort of stop-and-start, as though at every moment his body was making the decision between life and death.
“Don’t worry, Papa,” I said. “I’m here to help you.”
He was trying to say something, to move, to rise. I placed a finger over his mouth, then I brought my hand down to his chest, splaying it out across his sternum. I took the cigarette from my mouth and slipped it between his lips.
He puffed, coughed, puffed again, and for a moment he looked serene.
I could feel his penis through the paja
mas, pushing against my thigh. It was small and hard, like a boy’s. His old, startled eyes gave me a look of fear.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Papa,” I said.
Confusion widened across his face, as if he was beginning to understand. Were we communicating, I wondered, in some realm beyond the seen? I inched forward, sliding myself onto his belly, then his chest. He raised his hands to stop me. His mouth was open, the cigarette burning, drooping over his chin. I reached for it, took a puff, and returned it. He produced a gurgling cry and his hands dropped once again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything is going to be okay now.”
The smoke curled up my belly and hung in the air in thin, dissipated strands.
He grinned suddenly, like a retarded dog, his eyes sparkled, and I could see the stubs of yellowed teeth and the wet, diseased gums wrapping his skull and jaw, and under it, under all of that, the skin, the muscle, the straining ligaments, the now almost useless organs, I caught a glimpse of myself in his expression, as if deep inside, we understood each other, we were each one of us a failed warrior.
That was the moment.
I took hold of his pillow and brought it down, suddenly and violently, onto his face. His body gave a start and I could feel the features of his face, angry and terrified, struggling through the heavy fabric. His hands flew up and crashed against my chest and almost knocked me flying. Mustering my strength, I held his head locked in place while a faint choking scream emerged, and once again he bucked, his whole body rocking now. My eyes were shut, determined, while under me it was as if I had stuck a harpoon into a sea monster and we were tumbling, lost, through the waves. He roiled under my arms, brought his hands to my thighs and dug his nails into my flesh. I choked back a scream. It was a long minute before I felt his hands slacken, the nails pull out, and his arms subside and eventually collapse. His strength deserted him and his chest sagged and the hard, maddening force of his neck finally relented and died.
I waited before I raised the pillow and climbed free and looked down at him. The cigarette was crushed, lying against his cheek. His eyes were shut and it was impossible to tell if he was breathing. A film of sweat covered his face. Leaning forward, I thought I could smell myself on him. I gave him a soft kiss on the lips, then I lay down, exhausted, pressed my body into his and draped an arm across his chest.
“Papa . . .” I whispered. “Papa . . .”
Without warning, he gave a sharp mechanical start and stirred brusquely. He opened his eyes wide and jerked upright until he sat over me, gasping for breath. His body was violent and strange, a sudden colossus in shadow. He stared down for a long moment, breathing painfully, then formed his hands into a fist. I watched as he raised it shakily over his head. He opened his mouth wide and produced a long choking rattle. His old teeth emerged, and along with them that ancient sentry, his great tongue, sitting silently in his mouth. Our eyes locked in the dim light, and perhaps for the first time, he saw something of himself in me. His hands began to tremble and his arms flinched, high over his head.
I hesitated before reaching up and swaddling his doubled fist in my fingers. The struggle continued, brief, flagging, until I felt his muscles slacken and, finally, the old man surrendered. A tear formed on his cheek. He lowered his hands until they rested on my belly where I held them, warm, the knuckles pressing into my flesh. He sat like this, immobile, staring at me, his body shuddering. Tears were running down his cheeks and his chest heaved from the exertion. His silent sobs shook his figure and, brilliant against the light shining in from the bathroom, the ridgeline of white hairs along his arm and shoulder stood erect and fierce.
Solzhenitsyn in Vermont
I
ANTON SUGGESTED IT. HE SAID, HEAD TILTED BACK AND arms raised in a V of supplication to the changing weather, “You don’t get it. The game has rules. You’re not supposed to be yourself. These girls want intensity, they want someone to talk big ideas. Books! Read all those weird writers with weirder names. That’s the only way you’ll get into these chicks’ pants.”
In my time at Columbia I’d had no more than a handful of dates, with two ending drunkenly in unpleasant and fumbled lovemaking, where I felt like a deep-sea diver who had descended too far, too quickly, racing urgently to the surface.
“Start with Kafka,” Anton recommended, exhibiting a personal trainer’s authority. “He’s hardcore.”
I was never much of a reader. In freshman comp I paid friends to write my papers or ordered them from an ad in the back pages of The Village Voice. Like most in my family, I was uninterested in the turmoil and dislocations I guessed literature examined. My father was a GP, born in Ludhiana, India, who came to New Jersey in the sixties and founded a small but thriving practice. Mom was a dentist from neighboring Jullundar. The marriage was arranged, in the modern sense: they were allowed to meet several times and each decided they could live and, with luck, fall in love with the other. But instead of love, and after years of skirmishes and battles, an uneasy truce endured. My brother and I grew up in a simulacrum of stability, and I vowed at a young age that I’d do better, that this would never happen to me.
That night I read The Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa’s story immediately gripped me. How strange, funny, moving, yet also, I quickly recognized, how possible. Kafka had written something so outlandish it circled back, a ship sailing for a far continent that rounds the globe and returns home, and the story opened a door inside me to a room I never suspected was there.
Soon I was devouring one after another of his works, the novels, stories, parables, letters. At one store, I almost leapt on an elderly woman who reached for the sole copy of Letters to Elena. She must have sensed a feral quality in my eyes because she surrendered it without a word and hurried away. There were others: Dostoyevsky, Broch, Zweig or, in Anton’s words, those weird writers with weirder names. The phone sat unanswered, dinner no more than the odd slice of pizza, and though I accomplished my coursework, all concentration rested on the books. Days passed without a shave or a shower, and my clothes became a uniform, ratty jeans and a grey pullover.
No doubt I looked a fright because when Anton accosted me one afternoon on Broadway, he studied me with the surprise I’d expect him to reserve for something completely alien. We hadn’t spoken since the day he recommended Kafka.
“What happened to you?” Anton cried out. “How many times do I have to call?”
It was only then that he took notice of the books piled under my arm and rudely grabbed one, almost letting the others tumble to the sidewalk. “What the fuck’s all this, man—?” Then he did something which, for the first time in our friendship, deeply wounded me. He studied the cover, turned a few pages absently, and abruptly hoisted the book high into the air and began to laugh.
Because of that laugh, I never spoke to him again.
II
After graduation, I moved into a studio east of Avenue A and found a job consulting for an international accounting firm. I devised statistical models projecting future efficiencies, given various scenarios. I shaved every day and dressed in a suit, yet constantly, at the back of my mind, I could sense that other me Anton had glimpsed, a dark creature haunting dusty, ill-lit rooms stacked high with unmarked boxes and searching for lost treasure. The furniture was sparse: futon on the floor, small desk, leather armchair, and a reading lamp found abandoned on the sidewalk the morning I moved in.
There were no bookshelves. I planned to watch books rise in towers around me, and finishing a book, say Goncharov’s Oblomov, I’d snap it shut and place it on the nearest pile. A daydream: one day climbing onto a chair to reach my hand up to the ceiling to slide the final volume into a surrounding wall of books.
Luck with women continued to elude me. Even that final year at college, when girls jumped into friends’ beds with the ease with which they hailed cabs on Amsterdam, I would put them off with my breathless excitement at discovering a new author. Sitting with my knees inching closer at a bar, I would
suddenly ask, full of expectation, “Bohumil Hrabal . . .?” or “Bruno Schultz . . .?” as though the name phrased as a question explained itself. The evening universally slid downhill, tripping over the feet of my fervor and landing, unremarked, amid the crushed cigarettes staining the dark wood underfoot.
The morning Christie walked in to a meeting with a new client as one of my team members, she was dressed in a peach business suit. She took the chair next to mine, introduced herself and, yawning, dropped her purse onto the desk next to a Styrofoam coffee cup. A crisp paperback nudged through the purse’s open zipper. It was Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
That night, over drinks, she asked, “Do you write?”
She was the first person I confessed my dream to: a large, brightly lit study lined with bookshelves and overlooking a garden of acacia and spruce, maybe a stream, and long, unadorned pine tables, the kind Solzhenitsyn wrote on in his hideaway in Vermont, where I would complete a single great work, a novel to stand beside the masterpieces I adored.
Soon we were seeing each other almost every night.
One evening, sitting together on the love seat in her West Side apartment, we discussed Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. She’d been turned off by the book at first. She couldn’t understand why Raskolnikov murdered the old pawn broker, and she understood less the frightful hell his actions caused him to descend into.
“He’s some idiot-savant,” she said. “He has no clue what he’s doing and he just keeps digging a bigger and bigger hole for himself!”
She’d warmed to the book only after Sonia Semyonovna’s appearance, confessing with a drunken sway and a furrowing of her brows, that it confirmed a deeply held belief of hers. She meant the necessity of suffering. Not suffering on the scale of Raskolnikov’s—a person shouldn’t have to murder an old woman to find some answer to questions in their life! But it offered a grand vision, a life so much larger than itself, as if it were projected onto an oversized, multiplex screen, though in her mind she didn’t see a static screen, but a sheet of white canvas rustling in the breeze. This way, parts of the image fell in and out of focus. The lesson she drew from the book was that suffering was a constant companion, however small or large your life was. Maybe necessity was the wrong word and, now she thought about it, she preferred companion. Yes, she said, that’s closer, the companionship of suffering. Look at Raskolnikov, he was an ass, a murderer, totally self-involved. Look what he had to go through just to have a glimmer of true feeling for Sonia! But she stood by him and the reason was not some outdated notion of a woman standing by her man, but because she saw that through him, they could together arrive at something essential. She thought it unspeakably romantic, and often while she was reading, she’d think of herself as Sonia. Would it be so terrible, she asked, to have been alive then under those circumstances?
Good Indian Girls: Stories Page 8
