English Lessons and Other Stories (15 page)

“Kamal hit the ball in front of a pony's legs in that ride-off,” he said. “It'll be a sixty-yard penalty shot.”

The players rose in their stirrups at the canter, horses reined in and snorting, as they moved across the field to the opposing team's goal. A helmeted player steadied his horse for the hit. His mallet made a perfect arc, lofting the ball to the mouth of the waiting goal. There was a flurry of hooves, a wild swiping of sticks and the sound of swearing within the mêlée. Then a flag went up, just in time for the call of the bugle.

The hot smell of horse sweat and manure assailed Janet and Arvind as they walked over to Kamal's string. He'd dismounted
and his last pony was still heaving, stirrups thrown over the top of the saddle.

“Well played,” said Arvind.

“We didn't win.” Kamal peeled his shirt over his head and handed it to a waiting groom.

“Get together. Let me take a picture,” Janet said.

“Some other time, Janet,” said Arvind.

“Let her,” said Kamal. “Let her take her pictures and move on.”

“Smile,” said Janet.

“Just one chota peg and then I must be getting back.”

Doctor-sahib smiled his very-wide smile at Mumji, and Chaya rose to offer him the decanter. In her father's home, she was never allowed to pour whisky for men, but times had changed and Doctor-sahib was just like family. He should be, Mumji said daily; he had done so much for them. Still, Chaya couldn't bring herself to touch his sweaty hand; she kept her sari from touching the arm of his safari-suit jacket as she poured the duty-free whisky.

When his glass was replenished, he launched into a story he would rather have told with Arvind present, but Arvind had taken Janet for her never-ending shopping. It was the story of the night he sat with Mumji when Arvind had the mumps and a hundred-and-four-degree temperature.

“I stayed with your Mumji all night. I didn't leave Arvind's bedside once.” No one who heard the story ever asked Doctorsahib what medicines had worked or how his presence had cured Arvind of anything. It was enough that he'd been there, warding off disease with the alphabet talismans he wrote after his name. Even so, Chaya rather liked this story. Now Mumji's soft voice said in her ear, “Get Doctor-sahib some ice, Chaya.”

Chaya went to the door to call for ice. When she returned, Doctor-sahib had begun his most favourite story. This wasn't one Chaya liked at all, but one that Doctor-sahib told often.

“Ten years ago your Mumji brought you to me, remember. So beautiful, so sick you were shaking and trembling like a leetle tulsi leaf.”

Chaya nodded. Yes, she remembered.

Doctor-sahib wagged a plump finger at her. “It was just after your first wedding night. And you were screaming and shouting and crying like a madwoman.”

Mumji shook her head left to right, left to right. “It was so bad we had to wrap her in a blanket so the neighbours wouldn't hear her screaming. If we had still been living in Shimla it wouldn't have been so bad, but here the houses are so close together every vendor in the street could hear her cries.”

The cook sent the dishwasher boy in with the ice and Doctorsahib swirled the honey-coloured bitterness about in his glass. “The monsoon had come so you all had returned to the plains for Kamal's wedding. The afternoon rain was so strong I remember the roads were steaming
pfffft
. The rain made everything green,” cloying approval reached out as though threatening to embrace her, “and blessed you and Kamal with fertility.”

She moved to sit down next to Mumji. Mumji stroked her arm gently. “My sweet daughter, how you frightened me then. I told Papaji, no matter what the expense, we must take her to Doctorsahib this minute.”

“So there I was in my office just bringing out my instruments for the day, and all of a sudden your Mumji was before me. ‘Save my little Chaya!'”

Chaya looked at the floor, her face flushed. Doctor-sahib leaned forward, Mumji's best whisky glass held up to the light.

“I took you into my office and…” a dramatic pause, “we had just one little talk and I saved you, because I knew you were a
reasonable girl.” Now a note of magnanimous triumph. “This whole family was saved from dishonour.”

This was Mumji's signal to proffer the decanter. But Doctorsahib said, No no. He must really be going. At the door, he placed two fingers under Chaya's chin and came close, exuding garlic and his pungent male odour. “Now you see, I was right — everything has turned out for the best.”

But Chaya didn't remember any little talk. Chaya only remembered how Doctor-sahib had ripped the blanket from her shoulders and slapped her cheeks, shocking her into a state of whimpering docility.

The way Chaya remembered it, Doctor-sahib had lifted her into a chair and commanded she open the jaws she'd clenched tight since her body had been taken by Kamal. Then he had taken a clamp from the table and, holding her head in the crook of his arm, locked its steel coldness over her tongue.

The way she remembered it, he had stood behind her and twisted her tongue back in her throat until her whole body arched backwards and up and her screams were the terrified screams of a woman betrayed.

And then she remembered his narrowed dark eyes an inch from her own and his so-reasonable voice. “If you bring shame to this family, if your Mumji has to bring you to my office like this one more time, I will tear your tongue out and send it to your father.”

And the so-reasonable voice went on, the pain increasing with each word till she thought he had decided to turn threat into action. “Your Mumji is a santini. You understand? A saint! She could have thrown you out when you and Kamal spent the night on that hill above Shimla. But she didn't. She loves you like a daughter — see, she even takes you to the doctor when you have a tantrum. Just remember that.”

And then, when there were no screams left in her body, the
merciful loosening of the clamp on her tongue till she could open her streaming eyes.

And later Mumji, entering the room. “Doctor-sahib, will she be all right?”

Doctor-sahib, returning the clamp to the white-clothed table. “Nothing to worry, dear lady. You have a very pretty little daughter-in-law. We just had a nice little talk. She was frightened that she would not be worthy of such a loving family. I told her she should be grateful — she is such a lucky girl, she has such a wonderful mother-in-law, such a handsome husband. I see so many women every day who are not so lucky.”

Afterwards, Chaya didn't make a sound for three whole days. Mumji had never needed to take her back to Doctor-sahib's office.

“Where would you like me to put these?” Chaya pointed to a pile of export-reject dresses Janet had bought at the shops on Janpath.

“Oh, shove them in somewhere, I don't care.”

Really, Chaya was very little use, not much good at packing and incapable of making the simplest decisions. This woman who so nearly married her husband had a studied ineffectual quality to her incompetence. There were moments when the slight jingle of her jewellery was all that betrayed her presence.

Janet gave up and cleared a space on the bed. “Tell you what. Why don't you sit here and talk to me while I pack. Tell me about yourself.”

Chaya sat down, confusion in her face.

“What is there to tell?”

“Tell me about you and Arvind, for instance.” There, she had asked it, almost commanded it.

“There is nothing to tell.” An automated voice.

“You were engaged to him before, weren't you?” A cross-examining barrister with a reluctant witness.

“Yes. I was engaged to Arvind but Mumji decided I should marry Kamal.”

“Did that bother you?” Perhaps a psychiatrist's style might produce results.

“It was Mumji's right.”

“But Chaya, what about you? If someone decided such an important matter for me, I would feel terrible. I would feel violated. I would feel angry.”

Chaya asked, “What should I have done?”

She was being asked what answer she wanted Chaya to give. Tell her what to say and Chaya would say it. Harmony is the mask that covers the absence of song.

What did she want Chaya to say — that Arvind was her one true love? That she still loved him? Where would that leave Janet? And what right did she, Janet, have to tell Chaya she should be angry about any of the past? Anyu would say, “Anger is useful only when life can be otherwise.”

“I'm sorry, Chaya.” A weight in her voice.

Chaya nodded.

“I am sorry for you, too,” she said.

“Sorry for me?”

“Yes, sorry for you, for you have given Arvind no children.” Here lay the true test of womanhood for Chaya, the fulfilment of being, the source, however short in duration, of a pure and devoted love.

“I…” Janet began. It would be easy now to retreat into privacy — but her questions had allowed Chaya no such right and she could no longer lay claim to it for herself. She could talk about fulfilment in a life without children, tell Chaya there were other ways to know love, other ways of seeing joy, other ways to satisfy dreams of what might have been, but Chaya would never believe her.

Whenever she'd been confused as a child, Anyu had said, “Perhaps the truth would be a good start,” so Janet said now, “It is Arvind who cannot have children.”

Chaya gave her an uncomprehending stare.

“He had the mumps when he was a teenager, and now he cannot have children.”

Chaya said, “You're lying.”

“I'm not lying.” Janet was indignant.

Chaya took a long, deep breath. Then she raised her childlike hands over her ears. “I'm not listening anymore. You're a very bad wife to say such terrible things about him.”

“Chaya, it's true. Ask Arvind.”

Chaya lowered her hands and looked at her sister-in-law. Then she began to rock herself forward and back, forward and back, and soon Janet realized she was laughing. Laughing! Laughing at her? At Arvind? At their pain?

“What is it, Chaya? Why are you laughing?” To be angry at Chaya would be like being angry at a child. She knelt on the floor before Chaya, taking her by the shoulders, shaking her gently.

Chaya stopped rocking. For the first time, Janet saw passion in the flare of her nostrils.

“I'm laughing at all of it. All of it. All of it. At Kamal who was worried about our son's inheritance, at Mumji who wants you to bear Arvind's children. At Papaji, who wanted his eldest son to come back to India. And…” dark eyes a few inches from Janet's own, “at myself for wanting all these years a man who could not have given me my child.”

Janet drew back.

“Are you saying a man who cannot produce children is not worth marrying?”

“Perhaps,” Chaya whispered, “not even worth loving.”

Her eyes closed again. The rocking motion began again, this
time from side to side as though Chaya were holding a baby. After a few moments, Chaya's eyes opened and she said, “I laughed at you, too, you know.”

“I know. Why?”

“Because,” said Chaya, as though pity were a prelude to friendship, “you will have to learn how to be an adjustable woman.”

Janet returned to her packing, her movements swift and urgent. Nothing, but nothing, must spoil this visit.

I told Tony — that is what he likes me to call him in America — I told Tony I will take English lessons till my green card comes. Valerie says there are English teachers who will teach me for free, and she will find a good one who will come to the apartment so that I do not have to go outside. Tony says OK, and then he leaves for work at the cardboard factory.

I pick up the breakfast dishes and Suryavir's toys. No one can say his name here — I will tell them at the school to call him Johnny, like Tony's Johnny Walker Whisky.

The phone rings and my heart starts to pound — dharak, dharak. Our answering machine message has Valerie's voice, and I follow the words with her accent.

“We're naat here right naow, but if you leeev a mehsej, weell get right baak to you.” But it is only Valerie herself. “Pick up the phone, Kanwaljit. I want to know if you're home so I can drop the kids off for the day.”

“Hello,” I say. “I am here. You come.”

Valerie is a nice person, but you cannot be too careful. Tony says we cannot meet anyone from India till my green card comes, so Valerie is the only one who sees me. I call her Grocery Store
Valerie to myself, because she answered my card in the grocery store, and now I babysit her two strong and unruly boys. What farmers they would have made in Punjab! My son is not so strong. More than two years of women's company. I spoilt him while we were waiting for Tony to get his citizenship, but what was I to do? If I had disciplined him, Tony's parents would have been angry — he is their only grandson.

Valerie's boys don't listen to love or scolding. But they go to school, and Valerie says it is the law, I have to send Suryavir to school. So I went there with her to register him and on the form I wrote the address I had memorized from Valerie's cheques, not ours. Still, Tony was worried in case anyone who might report us saw me. He makes me dress in pants so that I look Mexican, and says it is only a short while now. I hope so.

But first I will learn English. It's not that I don't understand it, but it has too many words. Get it. Put it. I am stuffed. Pick up your stuff. On the other hand. Hand it to you. I learned English in school, passed my matriculation examination, too. We learned whole passages of translation by heart — I had a good memory. Now Tony says I must speak English to pass my immigration interview and to memorize my amnesty story.

A knock. Someone is standing far away from the peephole — why are they doing that? Oh, it's Valerie; she was bending down to tie a shoelace for little Mark.

“Hello, hello. Come in. How-are-you?”