Amriika (47 page)

When the man had rung off, Ramji remained sitting where he was, by the phone, tense with excitement.
You’ll see him off, won’t
you
? And “Aziz”? That must be the new, more “Islamic” family name, for the New World.

The notepaper on which Ramji had copied out the airline flight details from Michel’s diary was in his shirt pocket; it also had the number for Lufthansa. Ramji fished out the paper, he picked up the phone, slowly dialled the number for the airline: I don’t know what to expect, but I’ll just make sure. Sounding anxious, which he was, he pretended to be a passenger, a Mr. M. Aziz, confirming his prior bookings, and gave all the details of the flight. Tense with excitement, he awaited the answer. And then: Yes, Mr. Aziz, the friendly voice told him, all was confirmed on the flight to Frankfurt tomorrow night and thence onward to Dar.

So Michel had used the new family surname Aziz to book the flight.

He was only misled, his father had said; and he committed this one error and wanted to escape the consequences? You’ll see him off safely, won’t you? … an appeal to one of us.…But if he were innocent, wouldn’t the family keep him close to them, and defend him if the need arose, instead of letting him sneak away?

The lock turned, the door rattled, then swung open, and Rumina came in, weighed down by a shopping bag in one hand and clothes from the dry cleaners in the other.

“Hi,” she said. “I settled for a gift certificate in the end, is that all right? — from a kitchen store.”

“Just great,” he said.

Should he tell her what he’s found out? Should he tell her now or later? … He doesn’t know.

“I’m going to go take a nap,” she said, standing at their bedroom door, her hands still full, “and later will you make the tea?”

“You can count on it,” he said and watched her go in and close the door.

What to think of Michel now, what to do? Had Michel lied, had he taken part in the bombing after all? But surely by “he was misled” Mr. Aziz only meant that “the boy” had been influenced in the past into frittering away a good many years of his life with the Movement, and not that he had let himself get involved in the bombing of the bookstore …

But if he were innocent, why would he want to abscond, all that distance, to Dar es Salaam — away from all his close family, instead of staying around to defend himself? An escape would only confirm his guilt in the eyes of the law. It was certainly not what your father would go along with if you were innocent.

A long time ago pretty Lucy-Anne Miller had put him in a similar quandary, saying, I had nothing to do with it (or something like that), hide me for a few days. She too had an escape plan, in her case she was set to drive away to Canada. But deep down in his guts, Ramji thought now, he
must
have known that she had had something to do with “it.” And if he had admitted to himself then that she had to have been involved in the bombing of the
ISS
building, what
should
he have done?

Advise her to give herself up to the police?

“You’re broody,” Rumina said later.

“A little, perhaps. I just want this whole affair to be over — then we can
live
, just for ourselves.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, nodding.

The doorbell sounded, she got up to answer it. It was Michel,
back from his day out with Zayd. He came in, looking cheerful and holding in his hand what looked like a black globe.

“I bought a present for you,” he said, giving the black object to Rumina, “and for Ramji, too, of course,” he added quickly. He had found it in a junk shop downtown: a Makonde carving from Tanzania, with what appeared to be two heads, either human or monkey, in the centre, four smooth limbs emerging from each and intertwining to form a sphere of intricate latticework.

Rumina loved it, thanked Michel profusely; and, Yes, it’s beautiful, Ramji said, with a nod at him. A token of friendship, a goodbye gift — or an omen?

T
he bridegroom, in a yellow sparkling turban and silver-and-grey Indian suit, his face hidden behind a white veil of jasmine strings, was led into the wedding ceremony high upon a horse, a glistening brown and black genuine Arab thoroughbred, which was preceded by a wailing reed flute and tabla and a bevy of whirling dancing women and girls in colourful saris and boys in red-and-yellow silk costumes. Delhi Delight, said Basu, that’s the name of the horse, it’s won the Kentucky Derby, and the sire is the great Shen-shah from Ireland. It doesn’t race anymore, of course, he added unnecessarily.

A section of the banquet hall had been reserved for the wedding ceremony, watched by about a couple of hundred people seated in rows. Basu was on one side of Ramji, Rumina was on the other, then Michel. Ramji felt intensely aware of Michel’s presence. He took Rumina’s hand.

The ceremony was officiated by a man in priestly garb; he was moonlighting, actually, as Basu explained. Like the horse, he was also on show — a mathematics professor from
UCLA
, reportedly the possessor of numerous patents, but now bare-chested and wearing
a dhoti, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The bride and groom sat across the ceremonial fire from him.

When the groom’s jasmine veil was finally lifted, a Caucasian face was revealed, with straight brown hair.

“He’s an
American!
” said Basu to Ramji.

To which someone behind them muttered: “And the bride is not American?”

“Very apt,” Ramji murmured to a red-faced Basu.

The ceremony over, the crowd stood up to mingle and search for refreshments. The bride and groom were escorted to a sofa in a reserved area of the hall covered with a blue oriental carpet and scatterings of rose petals, and on each side of them were enormous flower arrangements. Two cameras were on duty.

The groom appeared to be around twenty-five years old, the bride about the same age. He was of average height and muscular in build. The bride, attired in a traditional red sari and amply though tastefully bejewelled, her face pink with makeup and natural blush, looked breathtakingly lovely. Somehow at a wedding, Ramji observed to himself, the bride’s handlers always managed to give her a look that was at once beautiful, innocent and virginal.

One reason why Basu had brought them to this wedding in Torrance was to show them an exotic, “multicultural” event — an American wedding that was also Indian, and Hindu. Because it was a controversial wedding, Basu said, many who should have come, friends of the family, had decided to give it a pass. And so bodies were needed, Indian bodies to lend an air of success to the affair.

Among the Indians he knew, Basu explained, there was always a competition, friendly and sometimes not so friendly, measured by the professional achievements of their children. A doctor or a lawyer counted high. There was a story about the “tragedy” of
a couple whose only child secured a place in “only” (as they put it) engineering (instead of law or medicine) and had to move to Phoenix to hide their shame. The story was possibly exaggerated, but it had the ring of plausibility. The different Indian groups naturally preferred their children to marry among their own kind and class.

And so tonight’s wedding was ill-attended by families with eligible children. It set just the wrong example, for instance, for a girl who was at that tender age when she was prone to get dreamy-eyed over, if not exactly an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike hulk from the college football team, then perhaps a Tom Cruise, or worse, an earnest poet, when she should be thinking of a fellow-Indian gynecologist or geriatrician who would become that stout Republican unit, a gilded pillar of immigrant society.

The bride’s father, an acquaintance of Basu, came over. He was a Mr. Anand, a small thin man with a long face and high forehead, wearing a grey suit pinned with a red rose. He was an engineer working for a gyroscope manufacturer. “So nice you could come. Please eat. Please — come — and congratulate the couple.” The happiness on his face looked somewhat under strain.

Ramji did as he was bid, followed Mr. Anand to meet the couple, who were now by themselves and looked revived. James, the groom, turned out to be a student of commerce. A definite strike against the marriage, if the game were not already lost.

“Super boy, simply great kid,” Mr. Anand said to Ramji, when they had moved on to make way for other well-wishers of the couple.

“How did they meet?” Ramji asked. “Do they go to college together?”

“Yes.” Mr. Anand eyed Ramji for a moment, found him fit to open his heart to. “You know, at first we were dead against the marriage. No way, we said. I’ll lock you up in your room, I told her — not seriously, of course. And my wife, Mrs. Anand, you should meet her — she’s not fluent in English, but she’s very religious — she threatened to starve herself to death. When you bring up a daughter, you expect to be able to talk to her husband — speaking in English is not the same thing. Then Vinita said to us, At least find out more about Jim — that’s his name — talk to his parents. I telephoned the parents and they invited us for dinner. After dinner they said to my wife and me, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Anand, we have accepted your daughter Vini as our daughter, we have known her for over two years. We now ask you to accept our son James as yours.’ They’re an old family, very devout and respectable.”

“How did they agree to their son becoming a Hindu?” Ramji asked Basu when Mr. Anand was out of earshot.

“Oh — he has not become Hindu. He simply agreed to the ceremony. And the Anands agreed to a church wedding, that’s taking place tomorrow. It’s a private affair, mostly with Jim’s people.”

A devout Christian family and an observant Hindu one. What happens to the children of that union?

Basu read his mind. “They’ve agreed that the children should be baptized.”

“He doesn’t seem very happy, does he?”

“Who — Anand? No. They are desperate for their son now, an Indian girl of the appropriate caste is being sought.”

Basu’s Lata had turned seventeen and was already thinking of university. Basu had on his hands two projects, saving money first for her college fees, and then for the girl’s wedding. The first he
and his wife could more or less manage. As for the second … sometimes eligible Indian boys expected gifts — a house or a car were not unusual demands, or wads of cash. What could a socialist editor of a radical newspaper manage for a decent gift?

Ramji saw a worried expression come over Basu’s face; perhaps he was already regretting having come to this wedding, to be reminded of all the worries of having a daughter.

“Can you really control them?” Ramji asked, “they’ll do exactly as they please, no?”

Basu had a hearty laugh at this. “There speaks the concerned father — admit it, now. The idea, as you know,” he said, “is to restrict their options from the beginning — that is the way most parents do it. You can’t lock them up, you and I know that. But you can let them think they choose their friends while you pick the area you live in and the school they go to, and the friends you associate with — and let’s face it, the Indian lifestyle, with Indian people, is very attractive and loving for the children. The rest is luck.”

Still, Ramji thought — watching Lata and Leila and Hanif and a couple of others meandering freely now among the crowd and chatting and laughing and feasting on Indian buffet — you can never quite say what they will be up to. The kids are a change of weather hovering in the background, waiting to happen.

Rumina and Michel had wandered off together. Ramji peered into the crowd, couldn’t see them. He felt irritated, then a welling up of anger at Michel’s thoughtlessness. And Rumina did seem to go overboard with her friendliness. He felt terribly unhappy and alone.

There was loud applause as the bride and groom were escorted to the door, and then showered with rice and flower petals. By this time the bride had changed into a dress. A white Rolls-Royce
with chauffeur awaited to take them away to a life of connubial bliss. In American fashion the bride threw her bouquet of flowers over her shoulder; it didn’t land in anyone’s hands, but fell a few feet short of the crowd. There was a scrummage of young girls anxious to pick it up. For each one, hopefully, a doctor or lawyer awaited in the wings.

Then Rumina appeared, and she was pulling Michel by the hand. Ramji felt his face redden with scorching emotion, the more so as he was certain Lata and Leila had stopped in their tracks to watch him react. Finally he waved at Rumina and she came over with Michel.

Shortly afterwards Mr. Anand brought his wife to meet them. She was a well-built woman in her fifties wearing a purple sari, also pinned with a red rose, and they all shook hands and talked of what a wonderful event this was. It was hot, the husband and wife were sweaty, and their roses looked squashed.

On the drive back the talk was about the horse at the wedding.

“We went to look at Delhi Delight,” Rumina said to Ramji. “It was quite grand and very solemn. Did you know that Michel is an expert on thoroughbred horses?”

“No, I never realized that,” Ramji muttered.