The Inheritance Of Loss Part 3

"Very sorry," said Sister Caroline, "very sorry to hear the news, Sai. You must have courage."

"I'm an orphan," Sai whispered to herself, resting in the infirmary. "My parents are dead. I am an orphan."

She hated the convent, but there had never been anything else she could remember.

"Dear Sai," her mother would write, "well, another winter coming up and we have brought out the heavy woolens. Met Mr. and Mrs. Sharma for bridge and your papa cheated as usual. We enjoy eating herring, a pungent fish you must sample one day."

She responded during the supervised letter writing sessions: "Dear Mummy and Papa, how are you? I am fine. It is very hot here. Yesterday we had our history exam and Arlene Macedo cheated as usual."

But the letters seemed like book exercises. Sai had not seen her parents in two whole years, and the emotional immediacy of their existence had long vanished. She tried to cry, but she couldn't.

In the conference room beneath a Jesus in a dhoti pinned onto two varnished sticks, the nuns conferred anxiously. This month there would be no Mistry bank draft in the convent coffers, no mandatory donations to the toilet renovation fund and bus fund, to fete days and feast days.

"Poor thing, but what can we do?" The nuns tsk-tsked because they knew Sai was a special problem. The older nuns remembered her mother and the fact that the judge paid for her keep but never visited. There were other parts of the tale that none of them would be able to piece together, of course, for some of the narrative had been lost, some of it had been purposely forgotten. All they knew of Sai's father was that he had been brought up in a Zoroastrian charity for orphans, and that he had been helped along by a generous donor from school to college and then finally into the air force. When Sai's parents eloped, the family in Gujarat, feeling disgraced, disowned her mother.

In a country so full of relatives, Sai suffered a dearth.

There was only a single listing in the register under "Please contact in case of emergency." It was the name of Sai's grandfather, the same man who had once paid the school fees: Name: Justice Jemubhai Patel Relation: Maternal GrandfatherPosition: Chief Justice (Retd.)Religion: HinduCaste: PatidarSai had never met this grandfather who, in 1957, had been introduced to the Scotsman who had built Cho Oyu and was now on his way back to Aberdeen.

"It is very isolated but the land has potential," the Scotsman had said, "quinine, sericulture, cardamom, orchids." The judge was not interested in agricultural possibilities of the land but went to see it, trusting the man's word-the famous word of a gentleman-despite all that had pa.s.sed. He rode up on horseback, pushed open the door into that spare s.p.a.ce lit with a monastic light, the quality of which altered with the sunlight outside. He had felt he was entering a sensibility rather than a house.The floor was dark, almost black, wide planked; the ceiling resembled the rib cage of a whale, marks of an ax still in the timber. A fireplace made of silvery river stone sparkled like sand. Lush ferns b.u.t.ted into the windows, stiff seams of foliage felted with spores, curly nubs pelted with bronze fuzz. He knew he could become aware here of depth, width, height, and of a more elusive dimension. Outside, pa.s.sionately colored birds swooped and whistled, and the Himalayas rose layer upon layer until those gleaming peaks proved a man to be so small that it made sense to give it all up, empty it all out. The judge could live here, in this sh.e.l.l, this skull, with the solace of being a foreigner in his own country, for this time he would not learn the language.

He never went back to court.

"Good-bye," said Sai, to the perversities of the convent, the sweet sweety pastel angels and the bloodied Christ, presented together in disturbing contrast. Good-bye to the uniforms so heavy for a little girl, manly shouldered blazer and tie, black cow-hoof shoes. Good-bye to her friend, Arlene Macedo, the only other student with an unconventional background. Arlene's father, Arlene claimed, was a Portuguese sailor who came and left. Not for the sea, whispered the other girls, but for a Chinese hairdresser in Claridge's Hotel in Delhi. Good-bye to four years of learning the weight of humiliation and fear, the art of subterfuge, of being uncovered by black-habited detectives and trembling before the rule of law that treated ordinary everyday slips and confusions with the seriousness of first-degree crime. Good-bye to: a. standing in the rubbish bin with dunce cap on b. getting heatstroke in the sun while on one leg and with hands up in the air c. announcing your sins at the morning a.s.sembly d. getting paddled red black blue and turmeric "Shameless girl," Sister Caroline had told Sai, homeworkless, one day, and delivered her bottom bright as a baboon's, so that she without shame quickly acquired some.

The system might be obsessed with purity, but it excelled in defining the flavor of sin. There was a t.i.tillation to unearthing the forces of guilt and desire, needling and prodding the results. This Sai had learned. This underneath, and on top a flat creed: cake was better than laddoos, laddoos, fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was more civilized than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than Hindi. fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was more civilized than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than Hindi.

Any sense that Sai was taught had fallen between the contradictions, and the contradictions themselves had been absorbed. "Lochinvar" and Tagore, economics and moral science, highland fling in tartan and Punjabi harvest dance in dhotis, dhotis, national anthem in Bengali and an impenetrable Latin motto emblazoned on banderoles across their blazer pockets and also on an arch over the entrance: national anthem in Bengali and an impenetrable Latin motto emblazoned on banderoles across their blazer pockets and also on an arch over the entrance: Pisci tisci episculum basculum. Pisci tisci episculum basculum. Something of the sort. Something of the sort.

She pa.s.sed beneath this motto for the last time, accompanied by a visiting nun who was studying convent finance systems, on her way now to Darjeeling. Out of the window, from Dehra Dun to Delhi, Delhi to Siliguri, they viewed a panorama of village life and India looked as old as ever. Women walked by with firewood on their heads, too poor for blouses under their saris. "Shame shame, I know your name," said the nun, feeling jolly. Then she felt less jolly. It was early in the morning and the railway tracks were lined with rows of bare bottoms. Close up, they could see dozens of people defecating onto the tracks, rinsing their bottoms with water from a can. "Dirty people," she said, "poverty is no excuse, no it isn't, no don't try and tell me that. Why must they do such things here?"

"Because of the drop," said an earnest bespectacled scholar seated next to her, "the ground drops to the railway track, so it is a good place."

The nun didn't answer. And to the people who defecated, those on the train were so beside the point-not even the same species-that they didn't care if pa.s.sersby saw their straining rears any more than if a sparrow were witness to them.

On and on.

Sai quiet... feeling her fate awaiting her. She could sense Cho Oyu.

"Don't worry, dear," said the nun.

Sai did not reply and the nun began to feel annoyed.

They transferred to a taxi and traversed through a wetter climate, a rusty green landscape, creaking and bobbing in the wind. They drove past tea stalls on stilts, chickens being sold in round cane baskets, and Durga Puja G.o.ddesses being constructed in shacks. They pa.s.sed paddy fields and warehouses that looked decrepit but bore the names of famous tea companies: Rungli Rungliot, Ghoom, Goenkas.

"Don't you sit about feeling sorry for yourself. You don't think G.o.d sulked, do you? With all he had to do?"

Suddenly to the right, the Teesta River came leaping at them between white banks of sand. s.p.a.ce and sun crashed through the window. Reflections magnified and echoed the light, the river, each adding angles and colors to the other, and Sai became aware of the enormous s.p.a.ce she was entering.

By the riverbank, wild water racing by, the late evening sun in polka dots through the trees, they parted company. To the east was Kalimpong, barely managing to stay on the saddle between the Deolo and the Ringkingpong hills. To the west was Darjeeling, skidding down the Singalila Mountains. The nun tried to offer a final counsel, but her voice was drowned out by the river roar so she pinched Sai's cheek in farewell. Off she went in a Sisters of Cluny jeep, six thousand feet up into tea growing country and to a town that was black and slimy, mushrooming with cl.u.s.ters of convents in the dripping fog.

Night fell quickly after the sun went down. With the car tilted back so its nose pointed to the sky, they corkscrewed on-the slightest wrong move and they would tumble. Death whispered into Sai's ear, life leaped in her pulse, her heart plummeted, up they twirled. There was not a streetlight anywhere in Kalimpong, and the lamps in houses were so dim you saw them only as you pa.s.sed; they came up suddenly and disappeared immediately behind. The people who walked by in the black had neither torches nor lanterns, and the headlights caught them stepping off the road as the car pa.s.sed. The driver turned from the tar road onto a dirt one, and finally the car stopped in the middle of the wilderness at a gate suspended between stone pillars. The sound of the engine faded; the headlights went dead. There was only the forest making ssss tseu ts ts seuuu ssss tseu ts ts seuuu sounds. sounds.

Seven.

Oh, Grandfather more lizard than human.

Dog more human than dog.

Sai's face upside down in her soup spoon.

To welcome her, the cook had modeled the mashed potatoes into a motorcar, recollecting a long-forgotten skill from another age, when, using the same pleasant medium, he had fas.h.i.+oned celebratory castles decorated with paper flags, fish with bangle nose rings, porcupines with celery spines, chickens with real eggs placed behind for comic effect.

This motorcar had tomato slice wheels and decorations rolled out of ancient bits of tinfoil that the cook treated as a precious metal, was.h.i.+ng, drying, using, and reusing them until they crumbled into tinselly sc.r.a.ps that he still couldn't bear to throw away.

The car sat in the middle of the table, along with paddle-shaped mutton cutlets, water-logged green beans, and a head of cauliflower under cheese sauce that looked like a shrouded brain. All the dishes were spinning steam furiously, and warm, food-scented clouds condensed on Sai's face. When the steam cleared a little, she had another look at her grandfather at the far end of the table and the dog on another chair by his side. Mutt was smiling-head inclined, thump thump went her tail against the seat-but the judge seemed not to have noticed Sai's arrival. He was a shriveled figure in a white s.h.i.+rt and black trousers with a buckle to the side. The clothes were frayed but clean, ironed by the cook, who still ironed everything-pajamas, towels, socks, underwear, and handkerchiefs. His face seemed distanced by what looked like white powder over dark skin-or was it just the vapor? And from him came a faint antibiotic whiff of cologne, a little too far from perfume, a little too close to a preserving liquid. There was more than a hint of reptile in the slope of his face, the wide hairless forehead, the introverted nose, the introverted chin, his lack of movement, his lack of lips, his fixed gaze. Like other elderly people, he seemed not to have traveled forward in time but far back. Harking to the prehistoric, in attendance upon infinity, he resembled a creature of the Galapagos staring over the ocean.

Finally, he looked up and fixed his gaze on Sai. "Well, what is your name?"

"Sai."

"Sai?" he said crossly, as if angered by an impudence.

The dog sneezed. It had an elegant snout, a b.u.mp of n.o.bility at the top of its head, ruffly pantaloons, elaborately fringed tail- Sai had never seen such a good-looking dog.

"Your dog is like a film star," said Sai.

"Maybe an Audrey Hepburn," said the judge, trying not to show how pleased he was at this remark, "but certainly not one of those lurid apparitions on the bazaar posters."

He picked up his spoon. "Where is the soup?"

The cook had forgotten it in his excitement over the mashed-potato car.

The judge brought down his fist. The soup after the main course? The routine had been upset.

The electricity fell abruptly to a lower strength as if in accordance with the judge's disapproval, and the bulb began to buzz like the beetle on its back skittering over the table, upset by this wishy-washy voltage that could not induce a kamikaze response. The cook had already turned off all other lamps in the house in order to gather the meager power into this one, and in this uneven lighting, they were four shadow puppets from a fairytale flickering on the lumpy plaster of the wall-a lizard man, a hunchbacked cook, a lush-lashed maiden, and a long-tailed wolf dog....

"Must write to that fool of a subdivisional officer," said the judge, "but what good will it do!" He overturned the beetle on the table with his knife, it stopped buzzing, and Mutt, who had been staring at it with shock, gazed at him like an adoring spouse.

The cook carried in two bowls of sour and peppery tomato soup, muttering, "No thanks to me for anything.... See what I have to deal with and I'm not young and healthy anymore.... Terrible to be a poverty-stricken man, terrible, terrible, terrible...."

The judge took a spoon from a bowl of cream and thwacked a white blob into the red.

"Well," he said to his granddaughter, "one must not disturb one another. One's had to hire a tutor for you-a lady down the hill, can't afford a convent school-why should one be in the business of fattening the church...? Too far, anyway, and one doesn't have the luxury of transport anymore, does one? Can't send you to a government school, I suppose... you'd come out speaking with the wrong accent and picking your nose...."

The light diminished now, to a filament, tender as Edison's first miracle held between delicate pincers of wire in the gla.s.s globe of the bulb. It glowed a last blue crescent, then failed.

"d.a.m.n it!"said the judge.

In her bed later that evening, Sai lay under a tablecloth, for the last sheets had long worn out. She could sense the swollen presence of the forest, hear the hollow-knuckled knocking of the bamboo, the sound of the jhora jhora that ran deep in the decollete of the mountain. Batted down by household sounds during the day, it rose at dusk, to sing pure-voiced into the windows. The structure of the house seemed fragile in the balance of this night-just a husk. The tin roof rattled in the wind. When Sai moved her foot, her toes went silently through the rotted fabric. She had a fearful feeling of having entered a s.p.a.ce so big it reached both backward and forward. that ran deep in the decollete of the mountain. Batted down by household sounds during the day, it rose at dusk, to sing pure-voiced into the windows. The structure of the house seemed fragile in the balance of this night-just a husk. The tin roof rattled in the wind. When Sai moved her foot, her toes went silently through the rotted fabric. She had a fearful feeling of having entered a s.p.a.ce so big it reached both backward and forward.

Suddenly, as if a secret door had opened in her hearing, she became aware of the sound of microscopic jaws slow-milling the house to sawdust, a sound hard to detect for being so closely knit unto the air, but once identified, it grew monumental. In this climate, she would learn, untreated wood could be chewed up in a season.

Eight.

Across the hall from Sai's room, the judge swallowed a Calmpose, for he found he was upset by his granddaughter's arrival. He lay awake in bed, Mutt at his side. "Little pet," he clucked over her. "What long curly ears, from Sai's room, the judge swallowed a Calmpose, for he found he was upset by his granddaughter's arrival. He lay awake in bed, Mutt at his side. "Little pet," he clucked over her. "What long curly ears, hm? hm? Look at all these curls." Each night Mutt slept with her head on his pillow, and on cold nights she was wrapped in a shawl of angora rabbit wool. She was asleep, but even so, one of her ears c.o.c.ked as she listened to the judge while she continued snoring. Look at all these curls." Each night Mutt slept with her head on his pillow, and on cold nights she was wrapped in a shawl of angora rabbit wool. She was asleep, but even so, one of her ears c.o.c.ked as she listened to the judge while she continued snoring.

The judge picked up a book and tried to read, but he couldn't. He realized, to his surprise, that he was thinking of his own journeys, of his own arrivals and departures, from places far in his past. He had first left home at the age of twenty, with a black tin trunk just like the one Sai had arrived with, on which white letters read "Mr. J. P. Patel, SS Strathnaver." Strathnaver." The year was 1939. The town he had left was his ancestral home of Piphit. From there he had journeyed to the Bombay dock and then sailed to Liverpool, and from Liverpool he had gone to Cambridge. The year was 1939. The town he had left was his ancestral home of Piphit. From there he had journeyed to the Bombay dock and then sailed to Liverpool, and from Liverpool he had gone to Cambridge.

Many years had pa.s.sed, and yet the day returned to him vividly, cruelly.

The future judge, then called only Jemubhai-or Jemu-had been serenaded at his departure by two retired members of a military band hired by his father-in-law. They had stood on the platform between benches labeled "Indians Only" and "Europeans Only," dressed in stained red coats with dull metallic ricrac unraveling about the sleeves and collars. As the train left the station, they played "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty," a tune they remembered was appropriate to the occasion of leaving.

The judge was accompanied by his father. At home, his mother was weeping because she had not estimated the imbalance between the finality of good-bye and the briefness of the last moment.

"Don't let him go. Don't let him go."

Her little son with his frail and comical mustache, with his love for her special choorva choorva that he would never get in England and his hatred of cold that he would get too much of; with his sweater that she had knit in a pattern fanciful enough to express the extravagance of her affection; with his new that he would never get in England and his hatred of cold that he would get too much of; with his sweater that she had knit in a pattern fanciful enough to express the extravagance of her affection; with his new Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary and his decorated coconut to be tossed as an offering into the waves, so his journey might be blessed by the G.o.ds. and his decorated coconut to be tossed as an offering into the waves, so his journey might be blessed by the G.o.ds.

Father and son had rattled forth all through the morning and afternoon, the immensity of the landscape within which Jemu had unknowingly lived impressing itself upon him. The very fact that they were sitting in the train, the speed of it, rendered his world trivial, indicated through each window evidence of emptiness that stood eager to claim an unguarded heart. He felt a piercing fear, not for his future, but for his past, for the foolish faith with which he had lived in Piphit.

The malodor of Bombay duck drying on a scaffolding of sticks alongside the track snuffed his thoughts for a moment; pa.s.sing into neutral air, his fears came up again.

He thought of his wife. He was a one-month-married man. He would return... many years from now... and then what...? It was all very strange. She was fourteen years old and he had yet to properly examine her face.

They crossed the salt.w.a.ter creek into Bombay, arrived at the Victoria Terminus, where they turned down hotel touts to stay with an acquaintance of his father-in-law's, and woke early to make their way to the Ballard Pier.

When Jemubhai had first learned that the ocean traveled around a globe, he had felt strengthened by this fact, but now when he stood on the confetti-strewn deck of the s.h.i.+p, looking out at the sea flexing its endless muscles, he felt this knowledge weaken him. Small waves subsided against the side of the s.h.i.+p in a parsimonious soda water fizz, over which the noise of the engine now exerted itself. As three siren blasts rent the air, Jemu's father, searching the deck, located his son.

"Don't worry," he shouted. "You'll do first cla.s.s first." But his tone of terror undid the rea.s.surance of the words.

"Throw the coconut!" he shrieked.

Jemubhai looked at his father, a barely educated man venturing where he should not be, and the love in Jemubhai's heart mingled with pity, the pity with shame. His father felt his own hand rise and cover his mouth: he had failed his son.

The s.h.i.+p moved, the water split and spilled, flying fish exploded silver above the unravelment, Tom Collinses were pa.s.sed around, and the party atmosphere reached a crescendo. The crowd on the sh.o.r.e became flotsam churning at the tide's hem: scallops and starbursts, petticoat ruffles, rubbishy wrappings and saliva flecks, fish tails and tears.... Soon it vanished in the haze.

Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for a human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.

They sailed past the Colaba Lighthouse and out into the Indian Ocean until there was only the span of the sea whichever way he turned.

He was silly to be upset by Sai's arrival, to allow it to trigger this revisitation of his past. No doubt the trunks had jogged his memory.

Miss S. Mistry, St. Augustine's Convent.

Mr. J. P. Patel, SS Strathnaver. Strathnaver.

But he continued to remember: when he located his cabin, he found he had a cabinmate who had grown up in Calcutta composing Latin sonnets in Catullan hendecasyllables, which he had inscribed into a gilded volume and brought along with him. The cabinmate's nose twitched at Jemu's lump of pickle wrapped in a bundle of puris; onions, green chilies, and salt in a twist of newspaper; a banana that in the course of the journey had been slain by heat. No fruit dies so vile and offensive a death as the banana, but it had been packed just in case. In case of What? What? Jemu shouted silently to his mother. Jemu shouted silently to his mother.

In case he was hungry along the way or it was a while before meals could be properly prepared or he lacked the courage to go to the dining salon on the s.h.i.+p, given that he couldn't eat with knife and fork- He was furious that his mother had considered the possibility of his humiliation and thereby, he thought, precipitated it. In her attempt to cancel out one humiliation she had only succeeded in adding another.

Jemu picked up the package, fled to the deck, and threw it overboard. Didn't his mother think of the inappropriateness of her gesture? Undignified love, Indian love, stinking, unaesthetic love-the monsters of the ocean could have what she had so bravely packed getting up in that predawn mush.

The smell of dying bananas retreated, oh, but now that just left the stink of fear and loneliness perfectly exposed.

In his cabin bunk at night, the sea made indecent licking sounds about the s.h.i.+p's edge. He thought of how he had half undressed and hurriedly re-dressed his wife, of how he had only glimpsed her expression, just bits and pieces of it in the slipping of the pallu pallu over her head. However in memory of the closeness of female flesh, his p.e.n.i.s reached up in the dark and waved about, a simple blind sea creature but refusing to be refused. He found his own organ odd: insistent but cowardly; pleading but pompous. over her head. However in memory of the closeness of female flesh, his p.e.n.i.s reached up in the dark and waved about, a simple blind sea creature but refusing to be refused. He found his own organ odd: insistent but cowardly; pleading but pompous.

They berthed at Liverpool and the band played "Land of Hope and Glory." His cabinmate, in Donegal tweeds, hailed a porter to help with his luggage-a white person to pick up a brown person's bags! Jemubhai carried his own bags, stumbled onto a train, and on his way to Cambridge, found himself shocked as they progressed through fields by the enormous difference between the (boxy) English and the (loopy) Indian cow.