One Amazing Thing (4 page)

Farah. She had entered Tariq’s life innocuously, the way a letter opener slides under the flap of an envelope, cutting through things that had been glued shut, spilling secret contents. Her name was like a yearning poet’s sigh, but even Tariq was forced to admit that it didn’t match the rest of her. Boyishly thin and too tall to be considered pretty by Indian standards, she was smart and secretive, with the disconcerting habit of fixing her keen, kohl-lined eyes on you in a manner that made you suspect that she didn’t quite believe what you said.

The daughter of Ammi’s best friend from childhood, Farah had come to America two years back on a prestigious study-abroad scholarship from her university in Delhi. (Tariq, whose own college career was filled with stutters, was a senior then, trying to finish up classes he had dropped in previous semesters.) In spite of her brilliance, though, Farah almost had not made it to America. Her widowed mother, blissfully ignorant of what occurred with some regularity on the campuses of her hometown, had been terrified that American dorm life, ruled as it was by the unholy trinity of alcohol, drugs, and sex, would ruin her daughter. Only after a protracted and tearful conversation with Ammi had Farah’s mother given Farah permission to come. These were the conditions: Farah would live with Ammi for her entire stay; she would visit the mosque twice a week; she would mingle only with other Indian Muslims; and she would be escorted everywhere she went by a member of the Husein family. Since Abba was busy with his janitorial business, which was growing so fast that he recently had to hire several new employees, and Ammi’s day was filled with mysterious female activities, this member most often turned out to be the reluctant Tariq.

From the beginning Farah got under his skin. Though she was polite, a disapproval seemed to emanate from her, making him wonder if his disheveled lifestyle wasn’t quite as cool as he’d thought. He
couldn’t figure her out. Unlike other girls who had visited them from India, she wasn’t interested in the latest music, movies, or magazines. Brand-name clothing and makeup didn’t excite her. One day, feeling magnanimous, he had offered to take her to the mall—and even clubbing, later, if she could keep her mouth shut. She needed to see what made America
America
. But she had asked if they could go to the Museum of Modern Art. What a waste of an afternoon that had been. He had trailed behind her as she examined, with excruciating interest, canvases filled with incomprehensive slashes of color or people who were naked, and ugly besides.

On the way back, she had been more exuberant than he had ever seen her, going on and on about how innovative modern Indian art was, too, with Muslim artists like Raza and Husain in the forefront. She had made him feel stupid because he had never heard of these so-called artists, not even the one with the same last name as his. In retaliation, he had listed for her all the things he had hated about India from his duty visits there. She was angry; he could tell that from the way her nostrils flared quickly, once. She said, “It’s easy to see the problems India has. But do you even know what America’s problems are?”

He was stung into that hackneyed retort: if America had so many problems, she was welcome to go back home. Right now. She had turned her face to the car window. After a few minutes, her hand had sneaked up to her face to wipe away tears. Her fingertips came away kohl-streaked. He hadn’t felt like such a jerk in a long time, though he said far worse things to the girls he went out with. Perhaps it was that Farah didn’t carry tissues, which he translated as meaning that she had not expected him to hurt her. He stopped the car and apologized. She didn’t reply, but she gave a stiff little nod. The thin, curved rod of her collarbone reminded him, illogically, of a fledgling bird. That was when he started to fall in love.

Once when he was recovering from the flu, she had come into his room with a glass of barley water Ammi had boiled for him. She felt his forehead to check his temperature, and then touched the two-day growth of beard. “Looks good,” she said. His defenses eroded by fever, he was caught in the inflection of her voice. Something ancient in it reached out and reclaimed him. He stopped shaving after that. When at the dinner table his parents pelted him with questions, asking him why he wanted to do something so controversial now, when it was absolutely the wrong time, Farah lowered her eyes demurely. The beard had become a code between them. Even now, a year and a half after she had returned to India (India, where she was waiting for him to come to her), he had only to close his eyes to feel her cool, approving fingers on his jawbone.

“FOLKS, PLEASE, I NEED YOUR ATTENTION!”

Cameron’s voice crashed against Tariq’s eardrums, shattering the memory and jolting him back to the present. He found that he was kneeling with his forehead to the floor. He had gone through the entire evening prayer without paying attention to the sacred words. This realization, along with losing Farah all over again, made him angrier with the African American.

“We need to eat and drink a little,” Cameron was saying. “It’ll keep hunger and thirst from overwhelming us later on. If you come up to the counter and make a line, I’ll hand each of you your portion. It’ll be small, I’m afraid—”

Tariq jumped up from the prayer mat, banging his knee on a piece of furniture because the African American had turned off the big flashlight and was, instead, holding up the pencil light—another part of his strategy for controlling them.

“Why should you decide what we’re going to do?” he said. “Why should you order us around?” Even to his own ears, his voice bounced off the walls, too loud. He could see faces turning toward him in consternation. He bit his tongue to silence himself. They needed to realize that he was right. That way, he could have them on his side at the right time. “This is an Indian office. If anyone is to give orders, it should be the visa officer.”

But Mangalam, hair hanging limply over his eyebrows, shook his head. Even in the thin light, his face was haggard. He had been trying the phones every five minutes and had come to the conclusion that service was unlikely to be restored any time soon. He did not want the responsibility for all these lives. In his youth, before marriage and the diplomatic service had snared him with false promises of glamour and ease, he had been a student of chemistry. It seemed to him that each person in this room—and the young man in front of him was a prime example—was like a simmering test tube that might explode if the minutest amount of the wrong element were added to it. He did not want to be in the forefront when the blasts came. He was no hero. Wasn’t that why he had escaped to a post abroad rather than battling it out with Mrs. Mangalam?

“Mr. Cameron Grant here has been in the United States Army,” he said. “He is used to handling emergency situations. He knows better than I do what precautions must be taken. I vote that we follow his strategy and offer him every cooperation.” Other voices joined him, leaving Tariq stranded.

Tariq’s mouth filled with a rusty taste. Fool, he thought, glaring at Mangalam. The man was typical of the worst kind of Indian. Let a foreigner appear, even a dark-skinned one, and immediately they bowed and scraped in front of him. He weighed the cost of  disobeying the African American. But first he needed allies.
Patience, he told himself. After he ate and got the girl with the broken arm to fetch him more aspirin, he would undertake his own reconnaissance. Inshallah, maybe he would discover an opening the other man had missed, a possibility for escape. With God’s guidance, he might be the one to lead his companions to safety.

C
ameron portioned out the perishables: a turkey sandwich; three hard-boiled eggs, accompanied by salt in a little twist of paper; and most of a salad that Mrs. Pritchett had left uneaten. He set out nine napkins (bon voyage! they proclaimed cruelly) and placed a few spinach leaves on each. He cut the eggs into nine pieces with a butter knife, trying hard to make the pieces the same size. He arranged them over the spinach, and sprinkled them with salt. He cut up the sandwich, too, but set it to the side because he wasn’t sure if everyone ate meat. His movements were meticulous and gentle, as though that might make a difference.

Malathi had emerged from Mr. Mangalam’s office after Lily, whose help Cameron had enlisted in this matter, had knocked on the door (but carefully, so she wouldn’t jar any fragile structures). “Get over it and come eat!” she had said sternly. Perhaps being rebuked by a teenager had made Malathi rethink her conduct. Or perhaps she did not trust Cameron to save her share of the food. She maintained a sulky countenance and kept her arms crossed over the go bears! sweatshirt she was wearing. Cameron, who had been reading up on India in preparation for his trip, understood that she felt embarrassed. It was ironic; the sweatshirt covered far more of
her body than the midriff-baring blouse and thin sari had. But the ways in which cultural habits operated were mysterious.

Malathi’s petticoat, pale blue and edged with ruffles, looked rather elegant. She had lost her red bindi—it must have been a stick-on—and that, along with the stray hairs that had escaped from her bun to curl around her face, made her seem younger. Though she was still not speaking to Cameron, she had provided him—without being asked—with the napkins and the knife.

Cameron asked Lily to hand out the food—partly to keep her occupied. She had been unusually calm through events that must have been terrifying for a young person. Her hand, holding the flashlight as he bandaged her bleeding grandmother and set Uma’s broken bone, had been steady. She had asked only once if the old woman would be okay. But he felt a restlessness stirring under her skin, feelings she had tamped down. Some of the younger soldiers had been the same way. It was imperative to keep them occupied, to make them feel that they were central to the operation. Otherwise they could come unglued.

He’d put Lily in charge mostly because of Tariq’s accusations. He had felt a bitter laugh spiraling inside as he listened to him. So the boy thought he was the Establishment, trying to take over! He wanted to hold his arm up against Tariq’s, his far darker skin. He wanted to tell Tariq how it had been growing up with no money and skin that color in inner-city Los Angeles. Still, the accusations had cut into him.

Why did he feel guilty? Was it for having knocked Tariq out? For using violence when he should have found what the holy man called a better way? The word
ahimsa
rose in his mind because he had been studying Gandhi. He moved the thought aside apologetically. This was not the time for philosophy. Tariq could have killed them all if he had managed to wrench open the door. But the mind,
the treacherous mind. It reminded him that he had killed far more people in his lifetime than Tariq ever would.

To keep the memories away, Cameron checked the water supply: four pint-size bottles, none of them full. If he gave everyone a half cup—and how could he give less?—it would be gone.

Mr. Mangalam was taking tiny bites of his egg with his eyes closed, savoring every morsel. Cameron asked him if there was anything else to drink. Maybe something they had overlooked? A gallon jug in the back? Some leftover tea? Mr. Mangalam opened his eyes reluctantly and shook his head.

Then Malathi said, “There is a bathroom.” In the pencil light, her eyes gleamed, chips of unforgiving, as she pointed at Mangalam. “His.”

THOUGH PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY SUSPECTED MANGALAM OF HAVING
suppressed this crucial bit of information on purpose, it was not so. The earthquake and its aftermath had driven the presence of the bathroom from his mind. Very possibly, in a few hours, feeling natural urges, he would have recalled it and told Cameron. But perhaps there was something Freudian behind his forgetting, because the bathroom had always been his jealously guarded domain.

This bathroom, an anomaly of construction to which the only access was through Mr. Mangalam’s office, was something Malathi’s coworkers discussed often, usually as they made their way during their break down the long corridor to the women’s restroom, which was drafty and smelled of mildew. Because none of them had seen Mangalam’s bathroom, in their minds it assumed mythic proportions, filled with items culled from the pages of the glossies they bought, secondhand, from the newspaper stall near the subway. Floor-length mirrors, silken towels, perfumed liquid soap in elegant crystal
dispensers, a braided ficus tree that reached all the way to the ceiling, a Jacuzzi tub—even a bidet. They spoke of these things with envy but not bitterness; in the universe they inhabited, it was expected that the boss would have a bathroom to himself while the underlings trekked to the other side of the building.

Malathi, too, had subscribed to this worldview until Mr. Mangalam began to single her out. As his attentions grew, an illicit hope blossomed in her breast. She found herself thinking,
If he really cares for me…
She changed her break times to match his, though she knew that people would gossip. Several times a day she went into his office to ask what to do with applications she knew perfectly well how to handle. Waiting for his response, she leaned against the closed bathroom door in a casual pose that showed off her curves. These strategies led to the gift of chocolate and to today’s kiss, but not to the words she most wanted to hear: an invitation to use his bathroom, which would have countered the smug smile on the wife’s face and proved to Malathi that Mangalam did not consider her just another time-pass girl.

Barricaded in his office today, Malathi had realized that this was her chance to explore it; once her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, she went through it systematically. She discovered that the bathroom was nothing like the girls’ fantasies. It was a tiny rectangle into which a sink and a toilet had been crowded. Like the rest of the building, it was old and dispirited. The mirror’s edges felt uneven and worn under her fingers, and the toilet-paper holder wobbled. The only personal items in the bathroom were an air-freshening spray that smelled of chemicals and a bottle of mouthwash. Malathi had used it, swirling generous amounts around in her mouth. It was the least Mangalam and the universe owed her. The mouthwash tasted minty and bitter. Like love, she thought. Then she clicked her tongue, annoyed at having come up with a cliché like that. Finally,
she had dipped into his file cabinets, not really expecting to find anything. But her fingers had closed around an item that made her grin fiercely in the dark. For now, she would keep that discovery to herself.

When Malathi led him into this sagging, cramped space, Cameron couldn’t have been more delighted if he’d been ushered into a spa suite at a resort hotel. He checked the faucet to make sure that the water was running clean and asked if there were any containers that could be filled. There were. The party supplies for the consulate were housed, in spite of several memos of protest from Mangalam to the people upstairs, in a cabinet in the back of the visa office. Foraging, they discovered two fake-crystal punch bowls complete with ladles, a large saucepan for boiling tea and another for coffee (God forbid the flavors should be mixed), and one hundred bon voyage! bowls purchased for the farewell party thrown for Mangalam’s predecessor. There were also several matchboxes from Madras Mahal and sixteen packets of blue cake candles, which got everyone excited until Cameron pointed out that lighting any kind of fire was out of the question in case a gas line had ruptured somewhere.

Still, people felt better than they had in a long time, chatting as they lined up in front of the bathroom. Soon the countertop was lined with filled bowls. They shimmered like fairy pools when Cameron passed his flashlight over them, giving the room an unexpected festive aura. Cameron gave each person a bon voyage! bowl that they could fill from the bathroom faucet any time they felt thirsty. This way, he said, the water in the containers could be saved for the future, though probably they would be rescued before they needed it.

Uma could tell Cameron was thankful that he could say something everyone wanted to hear. There were other words he was holding back. She heard them faintly in the back of her head.
The
tap water might run out
.
There’s food for only one more meal
. She was glad he did not say those things, allowing everyone happiness for the moment.

When it was her turn to use the bathroom, Uma looked at herself in the mirror in the pencil light, which Cameron had given her. (The bigger flashlight was to be used only for communal activities, such as handing out food, or in case of danger.) In its narrow, angled ray her face was gaunt and more interesting than it had ever been. She touched her cheekbones, which had taken on a sharp, tragic definition, and wondered what had gone through the minds of the others as they examined their reflections. She drank three cups of water and splashed water on her neck, amazed at how normal this simple action made her feel. The pain in her wrist was still there, but like a nagging old relative to whose complaints she had grown accustomed. With the ebbing of pain, her natural curiosity resurfaced; she found herself imagining the lives of her companions, their secret reasons for going to India.

Cameron suggested that people get some rest. If the phone lines were still down when they awoke, they would have to try to open the door. A murmur swirled through the room. Uma felt a prickle at the back of her neck, half anticipation, half dread. Then her mind moved on to the untold stories that lay around her, just out of reach. Would she get a chance to discover some of them before they made it out of here? The possibility invigorated her.

When Cameron said that they needed two people to keep watch, she volunteered.

MR. PRITCHETT, THE OTHER VOLUNTEER, SAT UP STRAIGHT IN
his chair and looked out across the room. Though they had turned off the flashlights, he was surprised at how much he could see. Were
his eyes growing used to the darkness, like those of deep-sea creatures? Or was he imagining the bodies, some passed out, exhausted with worry, some tossing restively. Wherever possible, they huddled under desks and chairs, forming small, compact mounds. Some slept close to others, taking comfort from proximity. Some had staked out the corners, their limbs splayed out. Ah, the alphabet of limbs. How much it revealed of what people didn’t want to give away.

Mr. Pritchett tried to ascertain which of the bodies was Mrs. Pritchett’s. He had been careful to note where she had been sitting when Cameron turned off the light, but now he could not find her. He scanned the room from one dark edge to the other. Had she moved? He imagined her scuttling crablike through the debris into the far recesses of the office, where she disappeared. Then he was disconcerted at having conjured up such a bizarre image. But that’s how it had been since she had landed in the emergency room: whenever he didn’t know what she was doing, his brain, usually so clear and orderly, ran amuck.

His fingers tightened around the lighter in his pocket. A cigarette—even a few puffs—would have calmed him. An entire pack of Dunhills sat in his other pocket, but smoking was impossible. The African American sergeant was right about the dangers of a broken gas line.

“Mr. Pritchett,” the young woman with the broken arm whispered. She sat on the floor two feet away from him, leaning against the bottom of the customer-service counter. Her arm hung stiffly in a makeshift sling the color of Lake Tahoe on a sunny day. He had visited that lake as a child, the only vacation his mother and he had ever taken.

“Are you all right?” the young woman whispered.

He felt a frisson of irritation. Of course he wasn’t all right.

“Mr. Pritchett?”

He felt at a disadvantage because she remembered his name while he had let hers slip away. But he had to admit that it was kind of her to be concerned for him when she must be in significant pain herself. Hurting made most people selfish. Hadn’t that been the case with Mrs. Pritchett?

“I’m fine,” he said. To indicate appreciation, he added, “Call me Lance.”

If Mrs. Pritchett had been nearby, she would have raised an eyebrow; he was not a man for rapid verbal intimacies. He liked formality. That is why he loved being an accountant. Early in their marriage, Mrs. Pritchett had protested that he wanted even the plants in their garden in neat rows, like entries in a ledger.

“Lance? Like a spear?”

“My full name is Lancelot,” he found himself saying, to his surprise. Throughout his youth, he had insisted—in vain—that people call him Lance. When he moved away to college, he introduced himself only as Lance, and as soon as he was old enough to have his name changed legally, he had done so.

“Lancelot, like from King Arthur’s court?” the young woman asked. She laughed in delight. In the dark, the sound was like a bell or a bird. He wondered that anyone could laugh under conditions like theirs. He surely was incapable of such—what would one call it? Strength? Levity?

“My mother was fond of the Camelot stories,” he offered sheepishly, and this surprised him most of all because he never spoke of his mother.

“I am, too,” the girl said. “I love the old tales—I have one with me right now.” She patted her backpack. “Lancelot was my favorite among the knights, anyway.”

“I’m not like him,” Mr. Pritchett said. He considered romantic excesses undignified. He didn’t like adventures.

“Sometimes we grow into a name,” the girl said. “You might surprise yourself, Sir Knight.”

Maybe she was right. Now that he thought of it, didn’t he love the thrill of manipulating numbers, of balancing on the razor-edge of the law?

“It was embarrassing,” he found himself saying. He wanted to say more. How boys had made fun of his name, how once they had put his head in a toilet. Where did that ancient memory spring from? He couldn’t believe the things he wanted to pour out into this forgiving, pillowy dark!