He gave me his glossy visiting card, and his children, standing there, smiled and smiled at me, while his wife chattered about English studies and India. Neither of them had heard of McCullers and thought her a man. We walked together around the glass cases of the aquarium where large and well fed sharks swam in circles and in boredom, looking at us with dull-mirror eyes, wishing they were hungry and the sea was open.
Karan and I looked at each other when one circle around the alive and entombed fish was done, and the floodgates of memory opened again. The crowds separated us from his family.
‘You still love me, don’t you? I should have waited.’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I said, wiping my tears, carefully, in case the colours smudged.
‘You’re not. You always were a terrible liar. You came here looking for me. This is your idea of revenge. Well, this time, it’s goodbye,’ and he strode away back to the waiting half circle on the other side of the exhibits.
It was raining again, as my taxi left the city down the dark and gleaming roads. I would be back in the Fall, I had a teaching fellowship in New York, but meanwhile I would accept Benjamin’s offer of marriage. I would go back to the old cardamom estate, and to my father’s brother who would ask for Benjamin on my family’s behalf, for me. Ben had waited too long.
* * *
Benjamin’s estate was next to ours, and our families had always planned that we should marry. He had waited for me – waited and waited, I should say – but I was so hopelessly in love with Karan that it seemed that I would never come out of it. But now I had. I felt I had. When I told my Uncle that I was ready to marry, he laughed and said, ‘You’re thirty. Who shall I ask?’
‘Benjamin,’ I said.
‘Benjamin? But he was married last summer when you went to America. Why did you go? He asked you to stay.’
‘Oh hell,’ I said, involuntarily. We don’t speak like that in front of our uncles.
‘Don’t be silly, Eli. You shouldn’t talk like that. We’ll find someone else. Lucky that you have property or else it would have been impossible, even if you were ten years younger which you’re not. We’ll find a boy who is already in the States or in the Gulf. I’ll talk to the broker.’
‘The broker?’
‘Yes, you just pay him a commission on the dowry you plan to give at betrothal. How much are you going to give – rather, what shall we say we are giving?’
‘Uncle, I’m going back to Delhi today. I don’t think I’ll marry this summer.’
‘You really are insane. I told my brother not to over-educate you. Just look at you. Dressed like a man. Pants. Even a belt. And your buttocks showing. Can’t you pull out your shirt at least. And lipstick. Someone will think you’ve gone mad. Well, go see your grandmother. She’s been waiting to see you. I can’t drive you out to the airport today. I have work on the plantation. You go tomorrow.’
Uncle was furious. He looked at me through narrow, cynical eyes, denigrated everything I was or had done. I fled to the small dark room with its low entrance, where Grandmother lay resting. It was a pretty room, though so shadowed I could hardly see her. The smell of paddy boiling in large urns came wafting in from outside. There were small square windows with delicate white cotton drapes. I could see the workers threshing the grain. Her bed was narrow, but made of dark glossy redwood with elaborate canework at the head where she was propped up reading her Bible. I sat on the bench near the window waiting for her to look up.
‘And Jesus wept,’ she said, ending the lesson.
‘Hello, Ammachi.’
‘Eli, so you’ve come. Not even a postcard. Benjamin wanted to invite you for his marriage, but we didn’t even have your address. How can you disappear like that?’
‘I left the address with Uncle,’ I said, smiling at her. Her collarbones stood out sharp and clear from the edges of the large clean white blouse she always wore.
‘He said he didn’t have it. The important thing is, you didn’t write. What have you been doing? Look at your hair. Like a hen’s tail. And no earrings. People in America seem as badly attired as people in Delhi. Have you eaten? We’ve made three kinds of fish for you. It’s so wonderful you’ve come back. We must find a boy for you … Your father’s left you enough money, thank God!’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I have to get some books from the house in Delhi, and then I’ll go back to America.’
‘You’re leaving tomorrow? But you’ve just arrived. You always lacked common sense. That’s why it’s so difficult to get you married off. Benjy was such a good man. He would have looked after you well. But what’s the use. A boy needs someone who can cook and clean, not someone who reads all the time.’
‘I’m thirty, I don’t need a boy. I have to go. I must go. I find the rain oppressive. My books are already damp, by tomorrow the gum holding them will have gone completely.’ I was almost weeping.
‘Rain, oppressive? But without rain things don’t grow. It’s true that there is no fish, in the rains the fish just disappear. Where do all the fish in the sea go? Ouseph says that it’s dangerous to fish. I’ve never been near the sea, so I won’t know. Eli, we were lucky today. We made three kinds of fish for you. Go and eat, you’re tired.’
‘I hate fish,’ I said stonily.
‘You’re just like your father. He was my favourite. Your uncle is not at all like him. I really had to talk your grandfather into giving your father that chunk of properly. Your uncle is still mad with me. And your grandfather kept saying, “But he’s a teacher. What’ll he do with money? He doesn’t know how to invest.” Anyway, you’re taken care of. But one thing, Eli, if another year goes by, no one will marry you. Oil your hair at least, it’s gone copper.’
‘I don’t want to marry, I want to study.’
‘But you’re thirty. How can you keep studying? Anyway, go and eat. I’m tired.’
She put her beautiful silver head on the pillow, and her creased soft face looked tired.
‘Come and see me before you go. I’ll give you a bottle of Kashayam. It’s made of gooseberries I cured ten years ago. It will make your blood flow.’
‘I wouldn’t touch it. The last concoction you gave me made my head swim.’ I bent to kiss her.
‘Thin-blooded, that’s why,’ she said, blessing me, with her dry papery old hands on my head and my cheeks.
I went out into the bright monsoon sunlight. After the rain, because the atmosphere is clean, the light is always strong.
Centipedes crawled out from beneath stones and locked in coitus. They looked like they would multiply at great speed and take over the land.
I looked at my thin flat stomach covered by my olive shirt. Would I have children? Was it important? Would I love a man again, and keep a house, and forget the eternity of waiting that I had just passed? I went in to eat my three kinds of fish for lunch.
The mango trees were in bloom as he came home that summer. They splayed out over the roof of the house, and he knew that later, as it grew hotter, the fruit would hang green and heavy, and then become golden in the chests of dark teakwood.
His sister opened the door. When he looked at her he knew that the summers had passed without their knowing. His first remembrances were of her as a child – thin, with slanting black eyes, like all the women in