ATLAS of UNKNOWNS

by Tania James

  Melvin takes his drink and grimaces, the liquid razing a path down his throat. He calls out to Berchmans. “This stuff gives you a headache before you even swallow.” Melvin drops the glass onto the counter. “Don’t you serve anything other than battery fluid?”

  Berchmans saunters over, studying Melvin’s anger from a distance. “Not for what you’re paying, I don’t.”

  “So if I were rich, you would give me the good brandy?”

  “Of course.”

  “If I were someone like Abraham Chandy? Is that it?”

  “Melvin, what is this? How could you be Abraham Chandy?”

  “I’m not saying I’m him! I am saying I deserve better, I deserve the same—”

  Melvin stops himself; his voice has begun to tremble. Berchmans is staring, as is the other customer, his brow furrowed behind a bottle. Melvin cannot lift his eyes from the counter. Carefully, quietly, he adds, “I deserve a nice thing. Once in a while.”

  He presses his hands to his eyes, which have grown suddenly full. Now, finally, he acknowledges his failures, the loss of his job, his wife, his daughter, and all the ways in which he is to blame. Now, when he feels smaller than he ever felt before, now he is a man.

  After a moment, he hears the unscrewing of a cap, the clink of glass against glass, the pouring of liquid. He feels a hand brush his shoulder. When he opens his eyes, his glass is brimming with gold.

  Melvin thanks him.

  Berchmans nods and moves away to clean some glasses. Berchmans is good in this way; he senses who wants to speak further and who does not. Even if Melvin wanted to talk, he would have no idea where to begin or how to utter the word “servant” as Abraham did, a word that had flown in long ago, unnoticed, and made its nest. Melvin knows he was never a servant, but to be perceived as such beyond his knowing is even more shameful to him than being one.

  When Melvin was a child, his family could afford to employ a part-time servant, an old man so committed to social custom that he refused to answer to his first name, Kelan, and would respond only to the full name that included his Untouchable caste: Kelan Pulayan. Back then, Ammachi told Melvin of the way life used to be, when Paravans and Pulayans would even walk backward in the streets if an upper-caste person were coming their way, according to rules that ran old and deep as rivers. But when Kelan Pulayan’s son, Kochu Kelan, came of age, he rebelled and converted to Islam. Kochu Kelan showed up one day in the backyard, growing the beginnings of a beard and wearing the white cap of his new religion.

  “The temple doesn’t want us,” Kochu Kelan said. “Only before Allah can we show our face.”

  “Then go.” Kelan Pulayan’s decision was quiet, as he had never once raised his voice while in Ammachi’s employ. “But don’t ever show your face to me.”

  From the doorway, Melvin watched Kochu Kelan tromping back the way he came, his hand steadying his topi. Kelan Pulayan’s back was to Melvin, still and straight as a tombstone as he watched his son. And then he returned to chopping wood in calm, even strokes.

  Though years have passed since Melvin first met Gracie, what pains him most from that time was his ignorance, his neglecting to understand that he lived in the same world as Kelan Pulayan. The customs that decided where Kelan Pulayan would worship and to what name he would answer, these were the rules that put Melvin beneath Gracie and Abraham above them all. This is the web that time has built, of which they are all a part. This is what Abraham will not let Melvin forget a second time.

  5.

  N THE THIRD DAY of Anju’s stay with Mrs. Solanki, Rohit phones with a voice full of brash adolescence. Anju is sitting at the kitchen counter across from Mrs. Solanki. When Anju hears his voice over the speakerphone, she stops swiveling on her stool and holds the counter with both hands. “I called the woman that Anju was staying with, Mom. She said you guys have had Anju for days.”

  The phrasing sounds plucked from a hostage-and-ransom movie, causing Anju to shrink into her chair. But Mrs. Solanki looks nonplussed. “Ah, Rohit, I was wondering when you would call, beta. I would’ve told you if you had called but you never call. Let this be a lesson—”

  “Is Anju there with you? Let me talk to her.”

  “She told us about the film you are trying to make.”

  “Not trying, Mom. I am making it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t want you getting involved.”

  “After all my crying and searching. All you did was film me without saying a word.” With a huff, Mrs. Solanki puts a closed fist on her hip though her eyes possess the playfulness of a person at advantage. “Sometimes, Rohit, I think you can be very insensitive.”

  “Look, are you going to let me talk to her or do I have to come over there?”

  Mrs. Solanki raises her eyebrows at Anju, who shakes her head.

  “She is in the shower. But let’s have dinner at La Tache this evening. Can you come? I will make reservations.”

  “But they probably won’t let me film at La Tache.”

  “Exactly, beta.”

  This phone call goes much more smoothly than the one Anju made on her first night back with the Solankis. Bird answered with fear in her greeting, a fear that soon turned furious. “Where are you? How could you run off like this?”

  But when Anju, with measured words, explained that she was not coming back to the apartment, that Mrs. Solanki had agreed to send her to Kumarakom, Bird grew quiet. She did not pose a question or interrupt with a word.

  “Please don’t tell Rohit,” Anju said carefully. “If he calls for me.”

  “Come back. You should come back. We should talk about this, Anju Mol. Have you talked to your father recently?”

  “My father knows nothing about all this.” Anju took a breath. “I never told my family about you. I have not spoken to them since December. When I ran away from the Solankis.”

  To this, Bird responded with stark silence.

  “I never told anyone about you,” Anju said. “Not the Solankis, not the school. I lied to you. I thought it was the only way to convince you to let me stay.”

  When finally Bird spoke, her voice was dry as if from disuse. “But you said your father was sending you letters….”

  “He wasn’t. And I never wrote.”

  For a time, there was only the sound of Bird’s breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” Anju whispered.

  “I don’t understand. This is not the way you say good-bye. As if I am no one to you.”

  “Chachy, are you crying?”

  “No,” Bird snapped. “I’m laughing.”

  Then: click of the phone hanging up. A good-bye as abrupt and wounding as Anju’s own.

  LA TACHE IS THE TYPE of restaurant that makes Anju want to serve the waiters herself, so elegant and calm they are, like soon-to-be starlets fully aware of their upcoming discovery. From memory, they recite the specials like sonnets and bring them on trays balanced on single hands, orbiting around one another without touching, part of a grander firmament of gold and crushed velvet and wood the color of semisweet chocolate.

  The waiter slides out a chair; Mrs. Solanki slides into it. She orders a Bombay Sapphire martini and then says to Anju, “I’ll need it to get through this evening.”

  In mutters, the Solankis try to negotiate who should break the news to Rohit, but before anything is resolved, Rohit strides through the revolving doors. Mr. Solanki says quickly, “You talk, you talk.”

  Perhaps as an unsubtle show of defiance, Rohit wears a red T-shirt riddled with purposefully torn holes as opposed to the slacks and suits of everyone around him. When he reaches the table, he gives his parents a sullen nod. “Anju,” he says tautly, and sits down. Under the table, Anju rubs her clammy hands on her knees.

  A basket arrives, carrying a cloth-covered bundle roughly the size of an infant. They spread their napkins on their laps while a waiter peels back the cloth to reveal a pile of rolls. Anju wishes, for a moment, that the waiter might prolong his stay by repeating his sonnet of entrées
.

  “So.” Rohit looks at his mother, then his father, and lastly Anju. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Before anyone can reply, Rohit shakes his head as if to reject a silly thought. “Listen, Anju, it’s not like I care if you want to have a reunion with my parents. In fact, I think that’s great, especially for the film. I’m all about reunions. They’re poignant, they’re cyclical, they’re redemptive. But what’s the use if you’re going to do something like that behind my back? How am I supposed to incorporate it into the story? With a title card that says: Anju decides to reunite with her host family? No, we’ll have to stage it again, but it’s going to look stagy, that’s all I’m saying. And I know what I said about manipulating reality, but staginess is obvious.”

  Anju stares at the basket, her cheeks growing as warm as the swaddled rolls. “I am not doing your movie anymore,” she says.

  It seems as though her words are slowly lowering onto his shoulders, causing them to sag. “I thought we talked about this.”

  “We did, but I did more thinking and I think I am right.”

  “So what, you went to my parents so they could buy you a ticket back?” Rohit raises a finger at the waiter and orders a vodka and Red Bull, a cocktail that makes Mr. Solanki wince. “Is that it? Because if so, this film is really going to tank. What’s the point? Money bails you out. The end. Who’s going to care?”

  “Rohit, if I may.” Mrs. Solanki takes a sip from her martini to create an authoritarian beat of silence. “What it all comes down to is Anju’s decision. She told us everything that happened over these past few months, how she was living in Queens, how you found her and started making this film. It’s an extraordinary story.”

  “Yeah. I know. I discovered it.”

  “But now Anju is taking the reins. With my help.” Mrs. Solanki presses her fingertips to the base of the martini glass, as if to keep it in place. “As you know, I’ve been trying to get this episode off the ground for months now, and Jeff is finally on board—”

  “Episode of what?” Rohit asks warily.

  “An episode of Four Corners dedicated to immigration. It’s a very hot topic right now. And Anju’s will be one of the featured stories.” Mrs. Solanki squeezes Anju’s shoulder. “She came to us with the idea actually.”

  Slowly, Rohit’s face slackens. The irritability slides off his face, leaving his features blank as a dish.

  “Now we know you probably think that this is unfair,” his father says gently. “But you have to think of it from Anju’s perspective.”

  “My show will give her more visibility,” Mrs. Solanki says. “Think of how her story will spread. I’m sure there will be agents interested in representing her for life rights.”

  “Life rights?” Rohit says.

  “You don’t know what life rights are?” Mrs. Solanki seems to take pleasure in educating her son. “It’s when a production company purchases the story of someone’s life in order to make it into a movie. Probably a TV movie in this case, but it could go for quite a sum, a bildungsroman like this, about immigration no less. Anyway, we’ll go to India, shoot the reunion, and air the episode next month. Excellent timing!”

  “And my documentary? What about my documentary?”

  “Well, you said yourself it would take years for that to happen, and it’s so rare to get a wide audience for documentary. Even a theatrical release would be like winning the lottery. I mean, darling, you must think of what is in Anju’s best interest.” Mrs. Solanki fishes an olive from her martini and sets it on the corner of Rohit’s saucer. “There. You like olives.”

  All this time, Rohit has not moved. His expression reminds Anju of a time in Jackson Heights when she watched a child’s newly scooped ice cream go tragically splat onto the gum-splotched sidewalk, the utter disillusionment with the world before a deluge of tears. “You mean your best interest,” he says.

  “And mine,” Anju says. “Your mother’s people are paying me also.”

  “Three thousand dollars,” Mrs. Solanki says, “plus the return fare home and per diem.”

  Anju turns to Rohit. “I thought you said that the subject is not receiving payment?”

  Rohit slams his hands down on the table. “They aren’t! Not in documentary! It’s unethical. But this is reality TV crap, all packaged and prettied up, no ethics at all, and if that’s what you want, then fine, go and get it.”

  “Rohit,” Mr. Solanki says. “Your voice.”

  Mrs. Solanki slices open a roll and spreads a sliver of butter on each half. “I know you’ve never wanted my help, but this could lead to better opportunities for you too, better than this film would anyway. So what I want to ask you, Rohit, is this: Would you like to be an associate producer for this episode?”

  “Yeah, right. So I can bring you coffee?” Rohit studies the olive for a moment. “Make me first camera.”

  Mrs. Solanki rolls her eyes. “Rohit, I’ve seen your films.”

  “First camera.”

  “Second camera. And you release your documentary footage to us.”

  Rohit chews on the inside of his cheek.

  “I am letting you shoot second camera,” Mrs. Solanki says, “and you haven’t even seen the inside of a classroom in a year.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” He disembowels a roll and plows the soft stuffing through a pool of olive oil. Rohit looks at Anju. “So it was all for the money, huh? No devotion to the art of the thing.”

  Anju stares at the remains of his roll. Of course, the money was only part, though a large part. She could tell him of the night in the subway with her pungent neighbor, how she decided that working with Rohit disturbed her, the way he nudged her into doing this and that, the way he tried, time and again, to force her life into a palatable time line and shape. The Anju in his film would be a cracked reflection or, at best, a broken shard of herself. And maybe Mrs. Solanki would distort her life just the same, but so would the local newspaper, and so would the local rumors. At least, by then, Anju would be home.

  6.

  IRD SITS ON the plastic-covered couch, watching an episode of Four Corners. She has closed the blinds. She has set her heels on the coffee table. It is 11:05 on Tuesday morning, and for the second time in her employ at the Apsara Salon, she has taken the day off. Two weeks have passed since Anju left her side, and though Bird never elaborated the details to Ghafoor, he has been careful with her, more lenient than before.

  On television, the four cohosts huddle around their cozy table, each of them holding their mugs, the Young Creationist hiding behind her glossy hair, the Still-Sexy Elder crossing her legs. Sonia Solanki has just announced that she will be taking tomorrow off, in order to tape a segment in India that will air in two weeks, about a fascinating young woman named Anju Melvin and her travails upon emigrating from India to the United States. The conversation slides into the topic of immigration, then illegal immigration. “Call me crazy,” says the Young Creationist, “but I think people who enter illegally are breaking the law, and people who break the law should be sent back. Period.” The Creationist receives a few claps and a rallying “Yeah!” egging her on. “We’ve got to address this problem at the root.”

  “Well, you’re grasping at leaves,” Sonia Solanki says, gesturing with a pen, rendering her the most erudite of the group. “Our country is heavily dependent on illegal labor from the millions of undocumented workers who are already here. They are more necessary to our economy than you think.”

  One person in the audience claps.

  Bird is hardly paying attention to the conversation as it unfolds, focused instead on Sonia Solanki. Her long, unaging neck and her lacquered fingernails. Her crisp, clean words and her posture, that of a dancer. Bird shouldn’t be jealous but she is, not simply because Sonia whisked Anju away, but because here is a woman entering the latter half of her years with grace, who is watched by thousands every day, listened to and talked about. Quite simply, she matters.

  Does Bird? Will Anju loo
k back on this strange streak of time and recall her with any warmth? Bird clings to the memory of Anju in the kitchen, asking the question, Did you know my mother? It was so easy to forget, sometimes, how vulnerable Anju was, how still a child full of doubt and wanting, and how the loss of Gracie had stained her as well, though she was too young to remember anything but absence.

  DURING THE COMMERCIAL BREAK, Bird goes to the nightstand by her bed and from the drawer pulls out an empty chocolate tin. From this, she retrieves the last of Gracie’s letters. The paper is blue and cottony soft, the creases delicate from disregard, having been opened and read on so many occasions. There was a time when Bird knew the look of every word, could string each line in her mind’s eye like pearls on a strand.

  April 6, 1988

  My dear Chachy,

  It has been a long silence, but this will be a short letter. I am writing to tell you that I won’t be seeing you for some time, maybe never, unless you come to see me in Kumarakom. We have decided to live with Melvin’s mother. His father has passed away.

  Just yesterday I saw a man climbing a betel nut tree—have you ever seen it? They are tall and thin, these trees. They look so fragile compared to the others. But a man climbs all the way to the top to cut the betel nut, and when he is finished, he does not climb down to climb up the next one. He throws his weight back and forth, still holding on to the treetop, so that the tree bends forward and backward, farther and farther, until he can grab the neighboring treetop and jump onto that one. The betel nut tree is thin, but you can’t break it, it’s so strong. You know my meaning? It will not break because it bends. The same with me.