The Inheritance Of Loss Part 19

But it WAS WAS so hard and so hard and YET YET there were so many here. It was terribly, terribly hard. Millions risked death, were humiliated, hated, lost their families-YET there were so many here. there were so many here. It was terribly, terribly hard. Millions risked death, were humiliated, hated, lost their families-YET there were so many here.

But Harish-Harry knew this. How could he say "Returncome back," in that easy oiled way?

"Naaty boy..." he said again when he brought Biju prasad prasad from the temple in Queens. "Giving so much worry and trouble." from the temple in Queens. "Giving so much worry and trouble."

And in that prasad prasad Biju knew not to expect anything else. It was a decoy, an old Indian trick of master to servant, the benevolent patriarch garnering the loyalty of staff; offering slave wages, but now and then a box of sweets, a lavish gift.... Biju knew not to expect anything else. It was a decoy, an old Indian trick of master to servant, the benevolent patriarch garnering the loyalty of staff; offering slave wages, but now and then a box of sweets, a lavish gift....

So Biju lay on his mattress and watched the movement of the sun through the grate on the row of buildings opposite. From every angle that you looked at this city without a horizon, you saw more buildings going up like jungle creepers, starved for light, holding a perpetual half darkness congealed at the bottom, the day shafting through the maze, slivering into apartments at precise and fleeting times, a cuprous segment visiting between 10 and 12 perhaps, or between 10 and 10:45, between 2:30 and 3:45. As in places of poverty where luxury is rented out, shared, and pa.s.sed along from neighbor to neighbor, its time of arrival was noted and antic.i.p.ated by cats, plants, elderly people who might sit with it briefly across their knees. But this light was too brief for real succor and it seemed more the visitation of a beautiful memory than the real thing.

After two weeks, Biju could walk with the aid of a stick. Two more weeks and the pain left him, but not, of course, the underlying green card problem. That continued to make him ill.

His papers, his papers. The green card, green card, the machoot sala oloo ka patha chaar sau bees machoot sala oloo ka patha chaar sau bees green card that was not even green. It roosted heavily, clumsily, pinkishly on his brain day and night; he could think of nothing else, and he threw up sometimes, embracing the toilet, emptying his gullet into its gullet, lying over it like a drunk. The post brought more letters from his father, and as he picked them up, he cried. Then he read them and he grew violently angry. green card that was not even green. It roosted heavily, clumsily, pinkishly on his brain day and night; he could think of nothing else, and he threw up sometimes, embracing the toilet, emptying his gullet into its gullet, lying over it like a drunk. The post brought more letters from his father, and as he picked them up, he cried. Then he read them and he grew violently angry.

"Please help Oni.... I asked you in my previous letter but you have not replied.... He went to the emba.s.sy and the Americans were very impressed with him. He will be arriving in one month's time.... Maybe he can stay with you until he finds something...." Biju began to grind his teeth through his nightmares, woke one morning with a tooth that had cracked across.

"You sound like a cement mixer," complained Jeev, "I just can't sleep myself, what with you grinding and the rats running."

One night, Jeev woke and trapped a rat in the metal garbage can where it was foraging.

He poured in lighter fluid and set the rat aflame.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up, motherf.u.c.ker," men shouted from up above. "s.h.i.+thead. What the f.u.c.k. For f.u.c.k's sake. a.s.shole. f.u.c.k you." A rain of beer bottles crashed around them.

"Ask me the price of any shoes all over Manhattan and I'll tell you where to get the best price."

Saeed Saeed again. How did he come popping up all over the city?

"Come on, ask me."

"I don't know."

"Pay attention, man," he said with strict kindness. "Now you are here, you are not back home. Anything you want, you try and you can do." His English was good enough now that he was reading two books, Stop Worrying and Start Living Stop Worrying and Start Living and and How to Share Your Life with Another Person. How to Share Your Life with Another Person.

He owned twenty-five pairs of shoes at this point; some were the wrong size, but he had bought them anyway, just for the exquisite beauty of them.

Biju's leg had mended.

What if it hadn't?

Well, it had.

Maybe, though, maybe he would return. Why not? To spite himself, spite his fate, give joy to his enemies, those who wanted him gone from here and those who would gloat to see him back-maybe he would would go home. go home.

While Saeed was collecting shoes, Biju had been cultivating self-pity. Looking at a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept in sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost n.o.body would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore.

"Stay there as long as you can," the cook had said. "Stay there. Make money. Don't come back here."

Thirty-one.

In the month of March, Father Booty, Uncle Potty, Lola, Noni, and Sai sat in the Swiss Dairy jeep on their way to the Darjeeling Gymkhana to exchange their library books before the trouble on the hillside got any worse. Father Booty, Uncle Potty, Lola, Noni, and Sai sat in the Swiss Dairy jeep on their way to the Darjeeling Gymkhana to exchange their library books before the trouble on the hillside got any worse.

It was some weeks after the gun robbery at Cho Oyu and a program of action newly drawn up in Ghoom, threatened: Roadblocks to bring economic activity to a standstill and to prevent the trees of the hills, the boulders of the river valleys, from leaving for the plains. All vehicles would be stopped.

Black flag day on April 13.

A seventy-two-hour strike in May.

No national celebrations. No Republic Day, Independence Day, or Gandhi's birthday.

Boycott of elections with the slogan "We will not stay in other people's state of West Bengal."

Nonpayment of taxes and loans (very clever).

Burning of the Indo-Nepal treaty of 1950.

Nepali or not, everyone was encouraged (required) to contribute to funds and to purchase calendars and ca.s.sette tapes of speeches made by Ghising, the top GNLF man in Darjeeling, and by Pradhan, top man in Kalimpong.

It was requested (required) that every family-Bengali, Lepcha, Tibetan, Sikkimese, Bihari, Marwari, Nepali, or whatever else in the mess-send a male representative to every procession, and they were also to show up at the burning of the Indo-Nepal treaty.

If you didn't, they would know and... well, n.o.body wanted them to finish the sentence.

"Where is your b.u.m?" said Uncle Potty to Father Booty as he got into the jeep.

He studied his friend severely. A bout of flu had rendered Father Booty so thin his clothes seemed to be hanging on a concavity. "Your b.u.m has gone!"

The priest sat on an inflatable swimming ring, for his gaunt rear ached from riding in that rough jeep running on diesel, just a few skeleton bars and sheets of metal and a basic engine attached, the windscreen spider-webbed with cracks delivered by stones flying up off the broken roads. It was twenty-three years old, but it still worked and Father Booty claimed no other vehicle on the market could touch it.

In the back were the umbrellas, books, ladies, and several wheels of cheese for Father Booty to deliver to the Windamere Hotel and Loreto Convent, where they ate it on toast in the mornings, and an extra cheese for Glenary's Restaurant in case he could persuade them to switch from Amul, but they wouldn't. The manager believed that when something came in a factory tin with a name stamped on it, when it was showcased in a national advertising campaign, naturally it was better than anything made by the farmer next door, some dubious Thapa with one dubious cow living down the lane.

"But this is made by local farmers, don't you wish to support them?" Father Booty would plead.

"Quality control, Father," he countered, "all-India reputation, name brand, customer respect, international standards of hygiene."

Father Booty was with hope, anyway, whizzing through the spring, every flower, every creature preening, flinging forth its pheromones.

The garden at St. Joseph's Convent was abuzz with such fecundity that Sai wondered, as they drove by in the jeep, if it discomfited the nuns. Huge, spread-open Easter lilies were sticky with spilling anthers; insects chased each other madly through the sky, zip zip; and amorous b.u.t.terflies, cuc.u.mber green, tumbled past the jeep windows into the deep marine valleys; the delicacy of love and courtliness apparent even between the lesser beasts.

Gyan and Sai-she thought of the two of them together, of their fight over Christmas; it was ugly, and how badly it contrasted with the past. She remembered her face in his neck, arms and legs over and under, bellies, fingers, here then there, so much so that at times she kissed him and found instead that she'd kissed herself.

"Jesus is coming," read a sign on the landslide reinforcements as they nose-dived to the Teesta.

"To become a Hindu," someone had added in chalk underneath.

This struck Father Booty as very funny, but he stopped laughing when they pa.s.sed the Amul billboard.

Utterly b.u.t.terly Delicious- "Plastic! How can they call it b.u.t.ter and cheese? It's How can they call it b.u.t.ter and cheese? It's not. You could use it for waterproofing!" not. You could use it for waterproofing!"

Lola and Noni were waving out of the jeep window. "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Thondup." Mrs. Thondup, from an aristocratic Tibetan family, was sitting out with her daughters Pem Pem and Doma in jewel-colored bakus bakus and pale silk blouses woven subtly with the eight propitious Buddhist signs. These daughters, who attended Loreto Convent, were supposed to make friends with Sai-once, long ago, so the adults had conspired-but they didn't want to be her friends. They had friends already. All full up. No room for oddness. and pale silk blouses woven subtly with the eight propitious Buddhist signs. These daughters, who attended Loreto Convent, were supposed to make friends with Sai-once, long ago, so the adults had conspired-but they didn't want to be her friends. They had friends already. All full up. No room for oddness.

"What an elegant lady," Lola and Noni always said when they saw her, for they liked aristocrats and they liked peasants; it was just what lay between that was distasteful: the middle cla.s.s bounding over the horizon in an endless phalanx.

Thus, they did not wave to Mrs. Sen emerging from the post office. "They keep begging and begging my daughter to please just please just take a green card," Lola mimicked her neighbor. Liar, liar, pants on fire.... take a green card," Lola mimicked her neighbor. Liar, liar, pants on fire....

They waved again as they pa.s.sed the Afghan princesses sitting on cane chairs among white azaleas in flower, virginal yet provocative like a good underwear trick. From their house came the unmistakable smell of chicken.

"Soup?" shouted Uncle Potty, already hungry, nose trembling with excitement. He had missed his usual leftovers-inside-an-omelet breakfast.

"Soup!"

Waving, then, at the Graham's School orphans in the playground-they were so angelically beautiful, they looked as if they had already died and gone to heaven.

The army came jogging along overlaid by courting b.u.t.terflies and the colorful dashes-blue, red, orange-of dragonflies, hinged in the severely cricked geometric angles of their mating. The men puffed and panted, their spindly legs protruding from comically wide shorts: how would they defend India against the Chinese so close over the mountains at Nathu-La?

From the army mess kitchens came rumors of increasing vegetarianism.

Lola often encountered young officers who were not only vegetarian, but also teetotalers. Even the top command.

"I think to be in the army you should eat fish at least," she said.

"Why?" asked Sai.

"To kill you must be carnivorous or otherwise you're the hunted. Just look at nature-the deer, the cow. We are animals after all and to triumph you must taste blood." But the army was retreating from being a British-type army and was becoming a true Indian army. Even in choice of paint. They pa.s.sed the Striking Lion's Club that was painted a bridal pink.

"Well," said Noni, "they must be tired of that mud color over every single thing."

"FLOWERS," it read on a grand sign nearby as part of the Army Beautification Program, though it was the only spot on the hill where there were none.

They stopped for a pair of young monks crossing to the gates of a mansion recently bought by their order.

"Hollywood money," Lola said. "And once upon a time the monks used to be grateful to Indians, the only country to take them in! Now they despise us. Waiting for Americans to take them to Disneyland. Fat chance!"

"G.o.d, they're so handsome," said Uncle Potty, "who wants them to leave?"

He remembered the time he and Father Booty had first met... their admiring eyes on the same monk in the market... the start of a grand friends.h.i.+p....

"Everyone says poor Tibetans-poor Tibetans," Lola continued, "but what brutal people, barely a Dalai Lama survived-they were all popped off before their time. That Potala Palace-the Dalai Lama must be thanking his lucky stars to be in India instead, better climate, and let's be honest, better food. Good fat mutton momos." momos."

Noni: "But he he must be vegetarian, no?" must be vegetarian, no?"

"These monks are not vegetarian. What fresh vegetables grow in Tibet? And in fact, Buddha died of greed for pork."

"What a situation," said Uncle Potty. "The army is vegetarian and the monks are gobbling down meat...."

Down they hurtled through the sal sal trees and the trees and the pani saaj, pani saaj, Kiri te Kanawa on the ca.s.sette player, her voice soaring from valley level to hover around the five peaks of Kanchenjunga. Kiri te Kanawa on the ca.s.sette player, her voice soaring from valley level to hover around the five peaks of Kanchenjunga.

Lola: "But give me Maria Callas any day. Nothing like the old lot. Caruso over Pavarotti:"

In an hour, they had descended into the tropical density of air thick and hot over the river and into even greater concentrations of b.u.t.terflies, beetles, dragonflies. "Wouldn't it be nice to live there?" Sai pointed at the government rest house with its view over the sand banks, through the gra.s.ses to the impatient Teesta- Then they rose up again into the pine and ether amid little snips of gold rain. "Blossom rain, metok-chharp," metok-chharp," said Father Booty. "Very auspicious in Tibet, rain and suns.h.i.+ne at the same time." He beamed at the sunny buds through the broken windows as he sat on his swimming ring. said Father Booty. "Very auspicious in Tibet, rain and suns.h.i.+ne at the same time." He beamed at the sunny buds through the broken windows as he sat on his swimming ring.

In order to accommodate the population boom, the government had recently pa.s.sed legislation that allowed an extra story to be built on each home in Darjeeling; the weight of more concrete pressing downward had spurred the town's lopsided descent and caused more landslides than ever. As you approached it, it looked like a garbage heap rearing above and sliding below, so it seemed caught in a photostill, a frozen moment of its tumble. "Darjeeling has really gone downhill," the ladies said with satisfaction, and meant it not just literally. "Remember how lovely it used to be?"

By the time they found a parking s.p.a.ce half in a drain behind the bazaar, the point had been too well proven and their smugness had changed to sourness as they dismounted between cows quaffing fruit peels, made their way past nefarious liquid pouring down the streets, and through traffic jams on the market road. To add to the confusion and noise, monkeys loped over the tin roofs overhead, making a cras.h.i.+ng sound. But then, just as Lola was going to make another remark about Darjeeling's demise, suddenly the clouds broke and Kanchenjunga came looming-it was astonis.h.i.+ng; it was right there; right there; close enough to lick: 28,168 feet high. In the distance, you could see Mt. Everest, a coy triangle. close enough to lick: 28,168 feet high. In the distance, you could see Mt. Everest, a coy triangle.

A tourist began generously to scream as if she had caught sight of a pop star.

Uncle Potty departed. He wasn't in Darjeeling for the sake of books but to procure enough alcohol to last him through civil unrest. He'd already bought up the entire supply of rum in the Kalimpong shops and with the addition of a few more cartons here, he would be prepared for curfew and a disruption of liquor supplies during strikes and roadblocks.

"Not a reader," said Lola, disapproving.

"Comics," corrected Sai. He was an appreciative consumer of Asterix, Tin Tin, Asterix, Tin Tin, and also and also Believe It or Not Believe It or Not in the loo, didn't consider himself above such literature though he had studied languages at Oxford. Because of his education, the ladies put up with him, and also because he came from a well-known Lucknow family and had called his parents Mater and Pater. Mater had been such the belle in her day that a mango was named for her: Haseena. "She was a notorious flirt," said Lola who had heard from someone who had heard from someone of a sari slipping off the shoulder, low-cut blouse and all.... After packing in as much fun as she possibly could, she'd married a diplomat named Alphonso (also, of course, the name of a distinguished mango). Haseena and Alphonso, they celebrated their wedding with the purchase of two racehorses, Chengiz Khan and Tamerlane, who once made front page of the in the loo, didn't consider himself above such literature though he had studied languages at Oxford. Because of his education, the ladies put up with him, and also because he came from a well-known Lucknow family and had called his parents Mater and Pater. Mater had been such the belle in her day that a mango was named for her: Haseena. "She was a notorious flirt," said Lola who had heard from someone who had heard from someone of a sari slipping off the shoulder, low-cut blouse and all.... After packing in as much fun as she possibly could, she'd married a diplomat named Alphonso (also, of course, the name of a distinguished mango). Haseena and Alphonso, they celebrated their wedding with the purchase of two racehorses, Chengiz Khan and Tamerlane, who once made front page of the Times of India. Times of India. They had been sold along with a home off Marble Arch in London, and defeated by bad luck and changing times, Mater and Pater finally became reconciled to India, went like mice into an ashram, but this sad end to their fabulous spirit their son refused to accept. They had been sold along with a home off Marble Arch in London, and defeated by bad luck and changing times, Mater and Pater finally became reconciled to India, went like mice into an ashram, but this sad end to their fabulous spirit their son refused to accept.

"What kind of ashram?" Lola and Noni had asked him. "What are their teachings?"

"Starvation, sleep deprivation," mourned Uncle Potty, "followed by donation. Proper dampening of the spirits so you howl out to G.o.d to save you." He liked to tell the story of when, into strict vegetarian surroundings-no garlic or onions, even, to heat the blood-he'd smuggled a portion of roast jungli jungli boar that he had caught rooting in his garlic field and shot. The meat was redolent with the creature's last meal. "Licked up every sc.r.a.p, they did, Mater and Pater!" boar that he had caught rooting in his garlic field and shot. The meat was redolent with the creature's last meal. "Licked up every sc.r.a.p, they did, Mater and Pater!"

They made a plan to meet for lunch, and Uncle Potty, with the dregs of his family fortune in his pocket, went to the liquor shop while the rest continued to the library.

The Gymkhana library was a dim morguelike room suffused with the musk, almost too sweet and potent to bear, of aging books. The books had t.i.tles long faded into the buckled covers; some of them had not been touched in fifty years and they broke apart in one's hands, shedding glue like chitinous bits of insect. Their pages were stenciled with the shapes of long disintegrated fern collections and bored by termites into what looked like maps of plumbing. The yellowed paper imparted a faint acidic tingle and fell easily into mosaic pieces, barely perceptible between the fingers-moth wings at the brink of eternity and dust.

There were bound copies of the Himalayan Times, Himalayan Times, "the only English weekly serving Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim, the Darjeeling tea gardens, and Dooars," and the "the only English weekly serving Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim, the Darjeeling tea gardens, and Dooars," and the Ill.u.s.trated Weekly, Ill.u.s.trated Weekly, which had once printed a poem on a cow by Father Booty. which had once printed a poem on a cow by Father Booty.

Of course they had The Far Pavilions The Far Pavilions and and The Raj Quartet The Raj Quartet-but Lola, Noni, Sai, and Father Booty were unanimous in the opinion that they didn't like English writers writing about India; it turned the stomach; delirium and fever somehow went with temples and snakes and perverse romance, spilled blood, and miscarriage; it didn't correspond to the truth. English writers writing of England was what was nice: P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, countryside England where they remarked on the crocuses being early that year and best of all, the manor house novels. Reading them you felt as if you were watching those movies in the air-conditioned British council in Calcutta where Lola and Noni had often been taken as girls, the liquid violin music swimming you up the driveway; the door of the manor opening and a butler coming out with an umbrella, for, of course, it was always raining; and the first sight you got of the lady of the manor was of her shoe, stuck out of the open door; from the look of the foot you could already delightedly foresee the snooty nature of her expression.