Oleander Girl (21 page)

To my chagrin, I find myself drifting off as I listen to Rajat. I shake my head, even pinch my arm. I stifle a yawn, hoping Rajat hasn’t noticed. I’m worried about the troubles in the warehouse, worried that Rajat is making a dangerous mistake, but never have I experienced such lassitude, descending on me like an evil spell. Perhaps my body longs to escape, in the only way known to it, from this country where I’m unloved.

Now, brusque and impatient, he asks, “Did the investigator find anything yet?”

“Yes!” Enthusiasm surges through me, but I keep my voice low. The Mitras are asleep, and that’s how I want them to stay. “Mr. Desai has narrowed our search down to about thirty people with the same first name who were at the university or employed there around the same time as my mother.”

“Thirty!” He sounds incensed. “It’ll be impossible to follow up on them all.”

“Yes. We’ll have to select carefully. I’m going to call and locate my mother’s professors, or maybe a secretary or adviser who might lead us to my father—or at least to some of my mother’s friends.”

“Speak up! I can hardly hear you.”

“I don’t want to wake the Mitras. We’re following up on that photo, too—I wish it wasn’t so blurred.”

“Doesn’t sound like you have anything solid,” Rajat says heavily.

“It’s not so bad!” I say, more to myself than to him. “Mr. Desai has already picked out a prospect for me to visit. This man went to Berkeley and had a girlfriend who was Indian, though later he married someone else. He lives relatively close to New York, in Boston. Remember my mother had mentioned plans to live on the East Coast?”

“Boston isn’t close!”

I’m disappointed that he’s not happier for me. “He’s an architect. I’ll go and see him as soon as we can set up an appointment.”

“Don’t you think you should call him before you go all the way up there? Ask him a few questions on the phone?”

“Mr. Desai doesn’t think I should. Often people won’t answer sensitive questions over the phone. Maybe they have a new life and don’t want to admit to old ties. Or they’re afraid someone might bring a paternity suit against them or try to blackmail them. Once they get suspicious, it’s almost impossible to get them to meet you face-to-face. And face-to-face is the only way you can tell if someone’s lying.”

There’s a pause. Then Rajat says, “That doesn’t always work, not even for people more experienced than you.”

“Vic will be with me. He says he’s a pretty good lie detector.”

“Vic?” Rajat says in a tight voice. “Who’s that?”

“He’s Mr. Desai’s nephew—and his assistant. Mr. Desai has arranged for him to drive me to Boston and back. He brought me back from the office tonight.”

“Why didn’t Mitra do that?”

The suspicion in Rajat’s voice annoys me. I remind myself that he’s had a stressful day.

“Mitra had to go somewhere, so Vic gave me a ride.”

“Vic! What kind of a name is that for an Indian?”

“I don’t know!” This time I can’t suppress my exasperated sigh. “Why are you so interested in him?”

There’s a pause. Then Rajat says forcefully, “I’m not interested. I’m worried because you trust everyone too easily.”

“I do not!” I retort, stung.

“Mitra shouldn’t have left you alone in their office. And why hasn’t he given you your phone so you can talk from your room? Maybe
he
should be the one going down to Boston with you.”

I suppress a shudder. “He can’t!” I whisper. “Remember, your mother doesn’t want him to know what’s going on. Besides, he’s been kind of—difficult. I’ll call you from Desai’s office tomorrow and explain.”

“Are you okay, Cara?” Rajat’s voice is concerned. “Is he treating you badly?”

Now I’ve gone and worried him on top of his other problems. “I’m fine, I really am.”

After a long, disbelieving pause, he says, “What good will it do for you to know if the man in Boston is lying, if he’s your father but doesn’t want to admit it?”

The question that has crossed my mind, too. I don’t have a good answer, but finally I say, “Then I’ll know not to search any further. Then I’ll know to come back to Kolkata.”

Rajat waits for Korobi to say that she loves him, but she merely claims she’s exhausted and hangs up. He sits in the sudden silence with his head in his hands. The idea of some unknown man taking her to Boston worries him. She said Mitra was being difficult. What did that mean? Rajat will have to have a talk with him, straighten things out. She said, if she knew her father was lying, she’d come back to India. Why hadn’t she said,
I’ll come back to you?

But what’s bothering him most, what’s gone deep into him like a poisoned thorn, is her comment
face-to-face you can tell if someone’s lying
. Because he hadn’t known with Sonia, even though people had warned him about her. She’d looked him in the eye and run her fingernails over
his bare chest and sworn she loved him, and he had believed her completely.

He can hear sounds below: the hall being cleaned up, the worktables pushed around, voices raised querulously. He must go down soon and explain to the men. He must make them see the changes are for their benefit. He must reassure them that the Bose family will take care of them as always. But the words he requires for this enormous task have fled from his mind.

There’s a knock. Will they never leave him alone!

“Who is it?”

No one answers. His heart beats erratically. Is it one of the workers, a relative of the man he fired, come to get revenge?

“Who’s out there?” he yells.
“Who?”

The door opens a crack. It’s the tea boy, looking fearful, holding a tray with a cup of tea and a plateful of glucose biscuits.

Rajat expels his pent-up breath. “For God’s sake, come in. I won’t bite you.”

The boy advances hesitantly. When he sets the tray down on the table, his hands shake, so that some tea spills onto the saucer.

“Sorry, Babu.” The boy wipes at the tray nervously.

“Who told you to bring me this?”

The boy backs toward the door. “No one. You didn’t have lunch, so I thought . . .” His voice fades away.

“Stop.” Rajat takes a sip. “Good tea!” He bites into a biscuit and realizes how hungry he is.

A grin, exposing crooked teeth, appears on the boy’s face as he watches Rajat eat. He is thin and wiry and wears shorts that have faded to no color and a cotton shirt that lacks a couple of buttons. “Glad you like it, Babu.” He opens the door to leave.

“Wait, let me pay you.” Rajat pulls out his wallet.

“Oh, no, Babu, no charge for you! You’re the owner!”

Rajat holds out a twenty-rupee bill. “This is for you, then. For being so thoughtful.”

The boy shifts from foot to foot. “No, Babu, I just wanted to do something for you.”

Oh, this boy, sent to him like a fresh breeze in the middle of a suffocating nightmare.

“What’s your name?”

“Munna.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve. At least that’s what my mother thinks.”

With a little nudging, Rajat learns that Munna lives in the slums beside Sealdah station. His father died some years back. His mother and two sisters work as housemaids. Munna went to school until class four; then he had to start working. He can still read a little.

Rajat thinks of Pia, who is the same age as this boy, of all the affluence that cushions her against disaster.

“What do you like to eat best?”

Munna grows animated. It seems that Rajat has hit upon his favorite subject. “Mughlai parathas from the corner shop. Kesto fries them so crisp. The bread fluffs up like this, and he puts eggs inside, and green chilies and onions, extra if you ask. He’ll even give spicy tomato sauce to eat it with. If you want, I can run and get you one.”

“How much?”

“Four rupees each.”

Rajat takes out a hundred-rupee bill. “When you get off work today, I want you to buy parathas for your whole family. And sweets. Tell them it’s a gift from me. Tomorrow you can tell me if they liked it.”

The boy protests, but only a little this time. Rajat presses the bill into the boy’s hand. How big his eyes are, sparkling! When was the last time Rajat saw someone so completely happy?

When the boy has gone, he finishes the tea and the biscuits and rises to his feet. He can handle things now, he thinks.

W
e are in the office, strategizing: Desai, Vic, and me, an unlikely, ebullient triumvirate, all of us excited because Vic and I are to meet Rob Evanston, the Boston architect, tomorrow. In a few minutes Vic will call his office to confirm Evanston’s appointment with Mr. and Mrs. Vic Pandey. We’ll drive down in the morning, be back by evening. No one outside this room—except Rajat—will even know. And perhaps, just perhaps, my search will be over.

Vic is part of the show now. When Desai asked him to drive me to Boston, he said, “Only if you tell me what’s going on.” In a way it was a relief because now we can talk openly. He’s kind in an offhanded way. The first night, he figured out the situation at Mitra’s and offered to give me a ride whenever I needed it. I appreciated the offer, but I didn’t want to be beholden. We finally reached a compromise: I’d take the subway to the office in the daytime, and he’d take me back at night.

I’m thankful for this upcoming meeting because nothing else has been going right. All week I’ve been phoning the university from Desai’s office, trying to find people who knew my mother. Several have retired or moved away. Others are suspicious or just plain busy. Some hang up. Those who are willing to talk mostly don’t recall Anu Roy—so many foreign students have passed through International Relations in twenty years. A few remember her as polite and smart, but quiet. They were
sorry to have heard of her death. No one recollects seeing her with any young men. No one knows where she had lived. Student Services has Anu Roy on the computer as a past student, but no other information saved from so long ago. Vic has been equally unsuccessful in his search for marriage records. Nor has anyone responded to the advertisements Desai has placed in the Indian American papers, requesting people who knew Anu Roy to step forward, and promising a reward. Whatever tracks my mother left behind have been effectively obscured by the dust of time. I’ll need a miracle to find my father.