Oleander Girl (32 page)

It is the night of no moon, and Sarojini is waiting for Bhattacharya to arrive. In spite of the coil that she has lit, the temple is full of mosquitoes, and she must pause her prayer beads to swat at them. She asks the goddess’s pardon—they are her creatures, too, though Sarojini cannot quite see the reason for their existence. Unless it is to teach her forbearance. But hasn’t the goddess given her plenty of humans in her life already to teach her that admirable quality? Her life with Bimal was a saga of forbearance, and even after his death, she has to call upon it as she gets ready to sell the house. Things are moving more quickly than she anticipated; in three short days, Sardarji is bringing a sale contract for her to look at.

Afraid that she wouldn’t understand it, she had phoned Rajat, whom she has not—surprisingly—seen for some days now, and asked if he’d have the time to help her with something.

He gave a bitter laugh. “I have all the time in the world, except for one evening when I’ve promised to take Pia out to dinner. What is this regarding, anyway?”

She wouldn’t tell him over the phone. The boy loved this house even more than Korobi did. He once said he thought it the most beautiful house in the world.

In the midst of prayer, her mind wanders.
Beautiful.
Yes, the house is that. It has the desolate beauty of fragile things, a desperate glimmer, the lamp brightening before it dies. Would she be sad if it was gone? She isn’t sure. True, it holds many memories, many traditions. But some of them she would be happy to release into the void.

Bhattacharya whispers that word, too, when he enters the temple.
Beautiful.
Sarojini almost doesn’t recognize him, he looks so different. He has taken off his chains and rings, his watch. He wears a simple dhoti. Throughout the service, he sits very still, his eyes focused on the goddess. Even the mosquitoes fail to distract him. At the end, he wipes his eyes with the edge of his dhoti, surprising Sarojini, who had not taken him to be a devout man. Impulsively, she invites him for dinner, explaining that it’ll be makeshift because of the plumbing problems, but he asks if he can instead sit with her on the temple veranda for a while.

“I could feel the goddess’s presence,” he says, lowering himself onto the old, cracked steps. “I can see why Netaji would visit here. Do you know, he was one of my heroes when I was a child. I would dress up like him in a khaki uniform, with a toy pistol tucked into my belt. I wanted to dedicate my life to doing good for India. That’s why, once I made enough money, I decided to join politics.” He exhales deeply. “It didn’t quite work out the way I imagined.”

This confession, too, she hadn’t expected. Is it the enveloping darkness, comforting as a womb? Is it the intermittent chorus of frogs, punctuated by firefly light, reminiscent of younger years when one had the ability to marvel at every minute miracle?

“Sometimes I feel the party is controlling my life—what I eat, wear, say. People I mix with. They’d even like to shape my thoughts, and once in a while I’m afraid they do. I joined them because I loved my religion and was sad to see our young people falling away from it. I was excited about the Hindutva platform, which I believed would bring back its glory. But—” He sighs again. “I don’t want to burden you with my problems, Ma.”

She is touched that he calls her mother, though it is a common enough practice among Bengalis. “It’s no burden. I’m an old woman alone, and happy for your company.”

He must hear, in her tone, that she means what she says, for he begins, haltingly, to tell her about his growing-up years. Deep into the night, he talks about his father’s modest career as a teacher; his mother, who worked late into the night as a seamstress so she could scrape together the
money to send him to a decent school; how they often had to do without necessities so he could get an education. He’d tried to repay them by doing as well as he possibly could in school and later in college. But soon he learned that wasn’t enough, that you needed the favor of the powerful. The things he had to do to gain that. And the things he’s done to others, now that he’s the powerful one.

When he finally stumbles to a stop, she says, “I think you’re too harsh on yourself. There’s good in you—I could see it during the puja. It’s never too late to change. Ask the goddess for help.”

“I did feel something tonight that I haven’t felt in years. It was like a dead part of me came alive. I have to thank you for it. It’s a special place, this temple. Do you think I might come again?”

“Of course, my son. It’s an old temple, nothing fancy, and falling apart in places. But if it gives you peace, you can come whenever you want.”

He touches her feet in appreciation as he gets up to leave. “It’s a great gift you’ve given me tonight, Ma. I can’t wait to come again.”

“It might not be as peaceful once the construction starts, though,” Sarojini says. At the questioning look on his face, she explains that she must sell the house. “Don’t worry,” she ends. “Saxena has promised he won’t touch the temple.”

Bhattacharya shakes his head forcefully. “It just won’t be the same! Part of the charm of the temple is the grounds—those big, hundred-year-old tamarind trees, the old house in the background, the gates that shut out the twenty-first century. We can’t let this happen! I’ll help you with the repairs, for both the house and the temple.”

Sarojini’s heart gives a leap. It is as though the goddess has taken this man by the hand and brought him to her. If she accepts Bhattacharya’s offer, her problems would be solved. Still, she hesitates.

He takes hold of her hand. “Don’t say no, Ma. It’ll make me happy to give you this gift. I waste my money in so many useless ways.” He grins, his teeth white in the dark. “Maybe this way I can keep the wife from buying more jewelry! The party would like it, too, my role in preserving a historic Hindu temple and its pristine surroundings. They’re bound to get a lot of publicity out of it. So you see, you’ll be helping my career.”

He’s so persuasive that Sarojini is on the verge of saying yes. Oh, how wonderful it would be not to worry about losing the house. But he has the ability to provide a more important present, and she must ask him for that instead.

She takes a deep breath. “I do want you to give me something—but it isn’t this. I would like you to help the Boses, who are going through such a rough time. You have the power to save them, I know you do. That would make me happier than anything else.”

He’s silent for so long that she is afraid she has angered him. Finally he sighs and says, “You’ve set me a hard task, Ma. It cuts into some big plans I’d made. It would have been easier—and more satisfying—to have done something directly for you. But I’ll try. I can’t promise much more than that.”

As he walks her to the house, holding her by the elbow to make sure she doesn’t stumble in the dark, Sarojini thinks how many layers there are to a man’s heart, tender spots beneath the calluses, hidden even from himself.

I
’m dressed perfectly for deception in my Prada suit. Still, I hesitate at the entrance to Rob Mariner’s office, my brain a nervous buzz. The bursts of pink oleanders along the freeway have disoriented me. My mother must have traveled this same freeway when she first came to California, seen the same flowers, felt the same stab of homesickness. I sense her around me, that yearning I’d felt long ago in my bedroom, but when I reach out, there’s nothing to grasp.

Yesterday I took the train up to the Berkeley campus. Vic had offered to drive me, but I wanted to do it alone. I spent all day going where my mother would have gone, asking questions, showing the photograph. People were kind—perhaps something deep in us responds to the search for a lost parent. They offered tea and sympathy and sometimes hugs, but no one remembered her. I walked up and down the campus, longing, most illogically, to turn a sudden corner and be faced with the girl in the photo, her straight, serious eyebrows, her improvident smile. The sprawling, sparkling lawns dotted with happy young people only compounded my dejection.

Last night I emerged from the shower to find a message on my phone. It was Seema, breathless with elation and tears, calling from a public phone in Kennedy airport. She would board her flight in just a few minutes. Her plan had worked. She was sorry to trick Mr. Mitra like this, but she had no choice. They’d had a bitter quarrel last night. He had grabbed
her and shouted into her face, his features distorted until they seemed those of a stranger. The shock had caused cramping pains in her stomach; she was terrified that she would lose the baby. But she was fine now. Her family was coming to pick her up from the airport in Kolkata. They would take good care of her and her child.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she ended. “Without you, I’d never have had the courage.”

Mitra, too, had called me last night, and again this morning. In the first message, he sounded worried. Did I know where Seema was? Had she told me she would be going out? I’d felt an unexpected jolt of sympathy as I imagined him entering the apartment and calling out his wife’s name, asking for tea. The second message had him breathing hard on the line before he said, “You made her do this. I know you made her do this.” His voice gave me a chill; I didn’t say anything to Vic about the calls.

Mariner’s offices are more elegant than I’d imagined: the spare lines of the furniture; the recessed lighting; the walls hung with original abstracts, intimidating in their inscrutability. I hide my nervousness to follow a slim, blond assistant to his private domain. He has agreed to a twenty-minute free consultation—too little time, I fear, for my true purposes. I wish Vic were with me. Dropping me off, he said, “Remember, whether you’re his daughter or not, you’re still yourself.” I wish I had his ability to reduce things to their simplest denomination.

Rob Mariner’s photo—taken from the website of a charity gala—had shown me a lean, dark man in an expensive suit, his arm around a woman in a lavish gown that displayed a considerable portion of her assets. Not his wife. He was divorced, though his name had been linked since then with a couple of high-society ladies. His smile had seemed world-weary in an attractive way. I feared he would be a hard man to fool.

But he is surprisingly easy to talk to, exchanging pleasantries to put me at ease. When I offer him my story of being the sole beneficiary of a rich, elderly relative who lives in California, he takes attentive notes. When I stammer that I can’t reveal the name of my relative, he nods equably. It’s now time to ask my most important question—only I don’t know how to broach the subject.

Then he leads me right to it, asking how I chose his office.

I tell him it’s his reputation—but also where he went to law school. “My mother went to Berkeley, too.”

“Really?” He looks interested, and that’s enough for me. I plunge into the details: her name, how she died in childbirth, what she studied, how I’m searching for people who might have known her. I know I should be more restrained, but I can’t help it. I slide her photo across the table and lean forward to look into his face.

Something’s going on inside him. He looks at me in a whole new way, not happy or sad, but with an intense, almost triumphant interest. Then he picks up the photo.

“Her name sounds familiar.” I can tell he’s not saying everything he’s thinking. “We might have had a class together. I did know several Indian students when—”

The phone rings. His secretary reminds him that his next client is waiting.

“I have to go,” he says regretfully. “But I’d love to talk further.” He looks into my eyes—meaningfully I think. “I do have some photo albums from my college days. We could look through those and see if she’s there. The only time I have free in the next few days is six p.m. tomorrow, for about a half hour, if you’d like to stop by my place.” He scribbles his address on the back of a card and slides it toward me.

I run across the parking lot.

“I’m sure he knows my mother! When I said her name, his face changed.”

Vic is more cautious. “Maybe you imagined it because you want it so much.”

“I don’t think so. There was something special in his eyes as he looked at me after that. Really looked, you know, like he was trying to recognize something.”