Before We Visit the Goddess (17 page)

Bela pictured Sabitri's face as she opened the note. She would have drawn herself up to her full height—Sabitri was a tall woman—and pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. She would have resisted the impulse to crush the note and throw it on the rubbish heap outside the store. She would have put it away inside the scuffed brown purse she had carried ever since Bela could remember and gone back to work, discussing catering orders with Bipin Babu in her calm voice, or giving suggestions to her customers.
Cauliflower singaras go well with rasogollahs.
Or,
With malpua you should order dal puris and potato curry, they taste excellent together.

But what would she have done once she reached home? Would she cry? Bela didn't think so. In all her life, she had never seen Sabitri in tears, not even when her brother Harsha had died of dengue fever at the age of two. After the cremation, when Bela and Sabitri had returned to the house—her father had died a few months earlier, gone all of a sudden in that horrible fire accident—Sabitri had gone into the children's bedroom and lain on Harsha's bed, which was too small, so that her legs dangled down, and stared at the ceiling. When Bela tried to comfort her, she did not seem to hear, and finally Ayah had come in and taken Bela away. But tonight in America as sleep pulled her under, an image came to Bela, she didn't know from where. It would return over the next few years even though she told herself that she made it up: Sabitri slumped on the floor of the cramped living room of their Kolkata flat, her head pressed against the armrest of the fawn velvet chair that had been Bela's favorite (Bela had curled up in it just two days ago), weeping until the fabric turned dark with her sorrow.

Three years of married life, but even now when she heard Sanjay's key rattling at their apartment door, a shiver of pleasure went through Bela, no matter how tired she was. Usually that was very tired, because of the long hours she put in at Tiny Treasures Child Care. She hated the job—the endless diaper-changing and vomit-cleaning, the colicky babies that screamed like banshees as soon as you put them down in their cribs—but it was the only place that would hire a woman like herself, untrained, inexperienced, at the bottom of the food chain. Then came the household chores. Cart the groceries back from Lucky's, three blocks away. Lug the laundry down to the washing machine on the ground floor. Lug it up again. Sweep and mop the pocked linoleum floor that refused to look clean no matter what she did. And finally the cooking, which always took too much time because Bela was a perfectionist—like her mother, though she hated to admit it. She disdained American food and took pride in preparing, from scratch, spicy fish curry or potatoes seasoned with panch phoron and whole red chilies.

Sanjay was tired, too, when he got home. After he came to America, he worked a minimum-wage job all day and went to school at night. Since he didn't have a degree from India, he had to start over. This time he studied computers. Only recently had he found a job as a programmer. At first Bela had been elated by this coup, but she soon realized that it was a less-than-ideal situation. The economy was shaky; the company was threatening to downsize. Sanjay had to work whichever shift they gave him; also, he worked overtime whenever he could because they needed to save money. Sometimes it seemed to Bela that they hardly saw each other. Still, he had a little routine for when he came home. He would set down his bag at the door, drop his jacket, and launch into one of his favorite movie songs, something from his college days like “Yeh Shaam Mastani” or “Pal Bhar Ke Liye.” He'd open his arms wide and Bela would sashay into them. Even as she laughed at the silliness of it, she silently thanked whichever unlikely power had brought—and kept—them together.

They had met in college. She was brand-new; it was his final year. She was a shy arts student; he was studying chemistry. More importantly, he was the charismatic leader of the student branch of the powerful Communist Party, CPI (M). She fell in love with him as she stood in the back of a crowd the first week of classes listening to him speak, overcome by his incendiary rhetoric, the fluent way he quoted revolutionary poetry.
Priyo ful khelibar din noi adya. / Dhangsher mukhomukhi amra.
She repeated the words to herself with reverent delight.
Dear one, today there is no time for flower-play. / Together, today, we face catastrophe.
She stood there after everyone else had left, still mesmerized by the words, until he came down from the platform and asked her what her name was.

“But what made you fall in love with
me
?” she would ask later. “I was so ordinary.”

“It was the wonder in your eyes. It made me believe I was capable of great things. And in any case, you weren't ordinary. Don't you remember, you'd just danced in the college's annual talent show and won first prize?”

When she told her mother about Sanjay, they fought more bitterly over him than they ever had—and they'd had their share of fights. Still, Bela brought Sanjay over, hoping Sabitri would be won over by his confident charm. She wasn't.

“For you, this romance with Bela is just a college fling—like your fling with politics,” she told Sanjay. “Pretty soon you'll settle down in what you now deride as a ‘bourgeois' job—with a nice little wife chosen by your parents. And my Bela will be left with a broken heart and a ruined reputation.”

Sanjay had walked out of their flat, slamming the door. It had taken Bela an entire day of apologizing and pleading before he would speak to her again. But he never forgave Sabitri for the things she had said, especially her comment about his parents. After Bela learned more about his childhood, she would understand why.

When Bela told her mother that she loved Sanjay, Sabitri insisted that she was too young to know her mind. “You'll regret it all your life if you tie yourself down to someone so quickly,” she said. When Bela informed her that Sanjay had asked her to marry him as soon as he graduated and got a job—which wouldn't be too difficult because chemists were in demand—Sabitri pleaded with her, “First finish your studies. That's the only thing you should be thinking of now. Do you want to be dependent on someone else for every expense? Every decision? Believe me, I know how that feels.” When Bela proved stubborn, Sabitri pointed out that the CPI (M) had many enemies. Sanjay was playing with fire. One misstep and he would get in trouble, maybe even get killed. Did she want to get embroiled with someone like that?

Bela retorted that Sabitri was being paranoid. And as for being dependent on Sanjay, it didn't matter, because she loved him.

“Love!” Sabitri gave a short, mirthless laugh. And then, “Since you refuse to listen to reason, I'm going to insist that you stop seeing him.”

“You've bullied me all my life, but this time I won't let you.”

“We'll see about that,” Sabitri said. She paid the night watchman of their building extra to accompany Bela to college and back.

“Wait outside her classroom,” she told him. “Make sure Didimoni doesn't speak to any men.”

“I'll hate you forever,” Bela said.

“Only until you have your own teenage daughter,” Sabitri said.

She did not know that love had made Bela ingenious, that during lunch break she would slip away to the library stacks, where Sanjay waited for her.

Overnight, as though the universe were in collusion with Sabitri, the political climate in Kolkata darkened. A little-known militant group, the Naxals, rocketed to prominence. There were escalations, bombs, clashes with the police, slashed-up bodies of young men. The CPI (M) was blamed for much of the violence. The United Front coalition government collapsed. Colleges were shut down, exams postponed indefinitely. In the midst of all this, Sanjay disappeared. Was he injured? Was he dead? He did not contact Bela, who grew frantic.

One must give Sabitri credit: she did her best to console her daughter, and she did not say that she had been right. She sent people to the police station and to Sanjay's neighborhood to try and find out what had happened. For a while, she even hired a private detective. But nothing came of it.

One afternoon, Bela sat desultorily on the fawn chair in their living room. She hadn't been out of the house in a week. Where would she go, even if she could have summoned the requisite energy, now that the college had been closed up? She was alone at home, Sabitri having gone to Durga Sweets because, no matter how tense the situation, Bengalis had to have their desserts. She had invited Bela to accompany her. But though Bela liked visiting the shop, which always smelled of chocolate sandesh, on this day she'd shaken her head, too depressed to speak. She hadn't bathed since yesterday; she hadn't changed her sari; she had picked at her breakfast without eating anything. When the phone rang, she almost didn't pick it up.

But thank God that, at the last moment, she had changed her mind. Because it was Sanjay on the line. As she sobbed with relief and resentment, he whispered apologies for his long silence. His life was in danger. He'd had to go underground. The police were looking for him, as were certain members of the Naxal party. They were watching his house—probably hers, too. Her phone might be tapped. That's why he hadn't dared to get in touch until now. He was leaving for America—he was at the airport gate already, and thus out of reach of his enemies. He would board the plane in a few minutes. Yes, he was leaving without a degree. What choice did he have? He was just thankful that he could escape with his life!

When Bela wept, certain she would never see him again, his own voice grew rough with tears. “Don't cry. I love you. I'll send for you as soon as I can, God-promise. I've written everything down for you, what I want you to do meanwhile. Go to your mother's sweet shop tomorrow morning at ten. On the way, someone will give you a letter.”

Sure enough, the next day, as she was getting down from the bus near Durga Sweets, a scruffy young man pressed a crumpled note into her hand. Bela learned that Sanjay's friend Bishu, who was now working in America and possessed connections, had somehow managed to arrange fake documents for him. He would do the same for her. When her papers were ready, and her ticket, the same young man who had given her the note—a friend of Bishu's—would call her. Meanwhile, she was to act as though she had given up on Sanjay and do whatever her mother wanted.

Bela believed Sanjay because the alternative was unthinkable. Following his instructions, she dressed neatly each day in an ironed sari and placed a matching bindi on her forehead. When college started back up, she no longer complained about the doorman. Sabitri suggested, gently, that she needed to forget the missing Sanjay and move on with her life; she didn't argue. She let Sabitri take her out to Flury's on her birthday (a special treat; Flury's was generally beyond their budget), where they ate meringues with cream. A few months later, Sabitri asked if she would be willing to have an arranged marriage—to someone who would let her complete college, of course. Bela protested mildly but then acquiesced. She sat meekly through the bride viewings, smiling as she recited a fierce litany inside her head:
Don't choose me, don't choose me
. Perhaps it worked, for the matches fell through. At night, she massaged Sabitri's legs with glycerin water—she tended to get cramps from being on her feet at work all day. This last act was not a pretense. It was Bela's apology to her mother, whom she loved more than anyone except Sanjay, for her upcoming betrayal.

Tonight when Sanjay came into their little apartment, there was no song and dance because Bishu was with him, huffing from climbing the stairs. (The elevator was out of order again.) The years had gifted Bishu with a prosperous paunch, though actual prosperity had proved more elusive. He worked at odd jobs ever since he was laid off from his engineering firm a year ago. Recently Sanjay had told her that Bishu's wife, a white woman he had met at his office some years back, was filing for divorce. She had asked him to move out of their house, Sanjay said angrily. He did not volunteer further information, and Bela, though curious, thought it best not to ask.