THE IMMIGRANT (31 page)

‘You are free on Saturday?’

‘My wife works at the library, it’s a part-time job she has.’

‘Holy shit, I wouldn’t work on Saturday, not if you paid me double.’

‘Well, sweetheart, she’s not like you.’

‘I can see that.’

So Saturday afternoon saw Ananda driving to Mandy’s apart-ment in Clayton Park. She lived on the seventh floor: two rooms, a TV, wall to wall carpeting, mattress on the floor, beanbags.

‘Can’t afford much,’ said Mandy as she followed Ananda’s eye.

‘Hey, you should have seen me as a student. I had nothing for years and years.’

‘But you’ve been a doctor for a while, surely?’

‘I had debts to pay, and I’m perhaps not as old as you think.’

She giggled. ‘Come here.’

He may have been the doctor, older and definitely more educated, but in ways that surpassed his imagination, she soon demonstrated who was the expert in the field of love.

He went home that first afternoon in a slight daze. A—he had committed adultery. His wife must never know. B—there was no way he could give this up. It was too splendid a thing. C—life was full of surprises and new experiences. He owed it to himself to do them justice.

‘Hi,’ shouted Nina, as he walked into the apartment.

‘Hi, darling,’ he replied.

She waited expectantly for his kiss, but he scurried into the shower instead. Mandy had given him a shower, but the smell of sex still lingered in his nostrils.

Nina heard the water running, and her heart sank. That meant sex, meant the clock, meant postponing the shopping till they had finished, and dinner would be late. Still, it was the weekend, they didn’t have to be on such a tight schedule.

Fifteen minutes later, a freshly shaved, damp, fragrant husband put his arms around his wife. ‘How’re you doing, baby?’

Baby. She cringed, then ignored her feminist reaction. ‘Fine. And you?’

‘Never better. Shall we?’

‘Sure. But what about the shopping?’

‘Later. This is more important.’

He lifted her, she put her arms around his neck. Ananda was being so romantic, it was rather wonderful she had to admit, even if he did call her baby. And the best part was that he didn’t look at the clock even once.

Ananda found everything about Amanda exciting. He loved her hair, a fine pale gold, darkening slightly towards the roots. Even after he realised that some of its more dazzling effects came from a bottle, he continued to be dazzled. And her skin—unless you made love to a white woman, you did not realise what fair really meant.

He was mesmerized by its slightly mottled hue, its blue veins, the pinkness of her nipples, her delicate eyelids, the thinness of her skin. He bought a small travelling clock and placed it next to the mattress.

‘What’s this for?’ demanded the mistress.

‘I need to time myself.’

‘But baby, you’re doing great.’

‘It’s not that. It’s part of the doctor’s orders.’

‘Which doctor? Gary?’ she giggled.

‘No, the ones in California.’

The story came out. ‘But baby, you should have come to me,’ said Mandy.

‘I would have, if I had known you.’

‘Well, now you do, and if you paid them, you have to pay me.’ She looked so knowing, so young, so after his money in such an obvious way, so willing to be his, that he could barely bring the next words out. ‘How do you mean?’

‘A dollar for every minute you are inside me. Any part, baby,’ she whispered, slithering between his legs, and drawing his penis deep within her mouth.

He agreed.

It became a game with them—how much money he owed her. Mandy kept the notebook, writing down the figures while Ananda held her on his lap. Every time it reached fifty dollars they would spend it on furniture or clothes for Mandy, charged to his credit card, chosen from a catalogue. Ananda had never thought an Eaton’s holiday special could be such an erotic object.

She was so inventive, he was amazed.

‘How do you do it,’ he murmured, ‘my new found land. My Newfoundland.’

‘Hey, I’m not a Newfie,’ said the ignorant Mandy.

‘It’s from a poem by Donne. When my sister came home from college for the holidays she used to read out poetry to me. She said she didn’t want me to become a one dimensional science type.’

But Mandy was not interested. Her curiosity was directed towards his wife.

‘Didn’t you say your wife used to teach English?’

‘Yes. In the same college where my sister studied in fact.’

‘Is that how you met her?’

‘Through my sister, yes.’

‘Your sister arranged it?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Couldn’t you find someone here?’

‘Oh, her father died, she wanted to emigrate, so I married her. It was to help her really.’

‘That was nice of you.’

‘I’m a nice guy.’

‘So it was just a marriage of convenience, right?’

Even a blind man could see where the innocent Mandy’s questions were leading, but a married man can always play for time.

‘Well yes, but I’m responsible for her. She has to get settled first, poor thing, she feels quite lost here.’

‘Mandy—Andy, our names match.’

‘They do indeed.’

Afternoons such as these fixed Ananda’s thoughts quite firmly on Nina’s future education. His wife was so trusting, so easy to deceive that his love for her increased exponentially. ‘Any time you want my help just let me know,’ he frequently said, as he watched her painstakingly go through the Library School prospectus, tick possible courses and double-check her choices with Beth on the phone.

‘Thank you, darling.’

‘You know how much I want you to settle down. Then you’ll be happier.’

‘It’s better now that I have this to do. Otherwise all one thinks about is how infertile we are.’

‘I’m not. Don’t you remember that report?’

‘Yes. But the doctor said I was ok too, remember?’

‘I’m always willing to go for further checkups, that’s why I even went and got my sperm tested.’

This conversation was supposed to be about her happiness, not their shortcomings. With an effort she put it back on course.

‘Now I have got this to look forward to, I feel more settled, don’t fret about me.’ She smiled at him. ‘You really are a worrywart, you know.’

So, he had her permission, albeit inadvertent, to go back to his secret life, to linger over scenes of sex and passion with Mandy, to compare the two in bed.

Mandy encouraged him to be wild, free, uninhibited, playful. With Nina he was his mother’s son, his sister’s brother, the good husband, playing out a role he had been trained for since childhood. Nine years in Canada had not dimmed the need to be this person.

No wonder he had not been able to succeed with white women before. He needed to stabilise this part of his life. There were too many unseen pressures that had spoken through his body. He smiled lovingly at his spouse.

‘What are you grinning at?’

He shook his head—nothing, it’s nothing.

Over Christmas and into the New Year, Nina worked at her application processes. In grave oversight she had left her degrees at home. Now her mother dug them out of the cupboard, went to the market to make photocopies, went to Miranda House to collect references from her daughter’s former teachers, as well as certificates testifying to the length of her teaching experience. She sent the whole thing to Nina by air mail registered post. Nina counted the rupees stuck on the packet and mailed back a hundred dollars that would cover every incidental expense. This lessened fractionally the guilt she felt about the trouble to which she had put her mother. Locally, her only task had been to get a testimonial from the HRL.

Nina spent weeks over the essay that would accompany her application.

Why did she want to become a librarian, how did she think she could contribute, what were her goals?

Difficult. She didn’t know what her goals were, but that was not something anybody need know.

Glibly she wrote about her proficiency in English, her long study of literature, her love of books, her eagerness to combine the skills she had been taught in India with newer ones acquired in this country, her wish to contribute to society.

She didn’t believe all she was writing, because she was nervous about a profession that wasn’t completely academic. I can always change track if I don’t like it, she told herself, this is a place that allows change.

Ananda repeated her assurances right back to her. ‘The important thing is to start somewhere. You don’t want to teach in a school, you can’t teach in a university, what options do you have? I’ve talked to people, it’s a good career,’ that is, Mandy had a cousin who was a librarian.

‘Really? Who?’

‘Some patient. I mentioned my wife was joining Library School and you should have heard her go on. Wonderful occupation, much better than working in an office, you meet a lot of people, jobs are comparatively easier to get.’

‘Yeah, Beth says the same.’

‘In life you have to have courage.’

‘It’s a professional course.’

‘That’s what you need, don’t you?’

He was being so supportive she decided it was churlish to hold on to her grouse about the California trip. Maybe there were some things a man had to do alone. And maybe it would have been unpleasant and embarrassing, revealing such private details before unknown American doctors. Hours had been spent over this issue with Gayatri and the group, now she was bored by it. It had stopped bothering her; she let it go.

He was becoming a better lover too; she hardly had to resort to herself. In deference to her, he had even stopped looking at the clock. She owed it to him to stop complaining about his transgressions.

On the last day of January, Nina dropped off the first part of her admission form at the Registrar’s office, and the remaining part at the office of the Assistant Administrator, Admissions, Library School. For all her doubts about this as a career, she hoped she would be accepted. In four weeks she would be coming this way again to submit her application for a scholarship.

The pavement was flecked with pellets of salt, there were huge banks of snow on either side of the path. Her boots had a little leak in them, she had not applied enough water repellent, and the salt had traced wavy lines along the surface of the leather, making them look hideous. Her toes felt like tubes of ice. The sky was a pale blue with strips of cloud. With the wind chill factor, it was definitely below zero. In Delhi at this time, flowers were beginning to bloom, the gentle sun would be caressing all its denizens, and everybody would be out in gardens, parks, roundabouts, relishing the few weeks before the heat came.

She took a slight detour, reached the warm red façade of Fader’s, entered the drugstore, sat on a high stool at the small sandwich bar near the window and ordered a strawberry milkshake. The course description lay in her bag and she took it out to read again. It sounded technical and different from anything she was used to. Perhaps her love of books had made her a maverick.

The next time she walked to the Killam Library, it was for an interview with the head of the Library Science Department, Dr Claude Cunningham. The weather had changed. No need to wrap a shawl around her head, wear her heavy, ugly coat or walk against an icy wind. The sky was overcast, but the air had a warm undercurrent to it. The huge piles of dirty sidewalk snow were melting, here and there some blades of grass could be seen.

Dr Claude Cunningham was a lovely man with an English accent, interested in her qualifications, her experience in libraries, how she saw her future, why had she switched from teaching, why not go in for a B Ed, or a PhD, might her bent not be more academic?

At this Nina paused, but the thought of the stiff competition for thirty five seats decided her against complete honesty. Her year at the HRL had shown her how much there was to libraries, she wanted to deepen that knowledge.

The Head was receptive. Her hours there could qualify as the work experience that was compulsory. She did realise that graduate school was full time, any job that took more than ten hours a week was discouraged? Yes, she had read the brochures, yes, thank you Dr Cunningham, thank you very much.

When Nina told Ananda about the interview, and that Dr Cunningham had talked as though she were already part of the school, Ananda’s confidence soon overshadowed her own more tentative hopes. ‘There is no doubt you will get in. You read so much, you have work experience, you have been a teacher of literature, you are serious and steady. In fact I am hoping for both admission and financial assistance.’

Nina looked at him gratefully. Things were getting better between them, the early despair and uneasiness had slowly abated.

A few months later Nina got the letter they had all been hoping for.

She stared at it, this promise of a degree recognised by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and with it the possibility of a job anywhere in North America.

Ananda was triumphant. The fee waiver especially moved him; this is a generous system, the worthy are always helped. Of course its renewal was dependent on an A average, but Indians always excelled, nothing to worry about.

Her admission warranted a phone call home. Her mother’s response was predictable, first the warmness of approval, then the anxiety that sounded like accusation. As a student, would she be able to give Ananda enough attention? Might she not be a drain on his resources? And did this mean she was postponing having a child, she would soon be thirty three.

Nina gritted her teeth. Her mother was such a vehicle of patriarchy, why was her concern for her daughter always expressed through worry about Ananda’s well-being? As for a child, both of them thought they could still wait a bit, she wasn’t that old after all. Besides, if it didn’t happen, it wasn’t the end of the world.

‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ shouted Ananda into the phone, ‘this is wonderful news. With a fee waiver it’ll hardly cost anything, and she’ll have a Canadian qualification.’

The mother was forced to be content with things not having turned out the way she had imagined. Pictures of children and a loving grandmother grew dimmer.