THE IMMIGRANT (42 page)

It took almost twenty minutes to follow the faint path among the trees. As she walked, she slipped occasionally on pebbles, her sari caught on thorny branches, the matka grew heavier, but the river was getting nearer.

At last the trees gave way to sand and stones. There it flowed, the Ganga, emerald clean and swift between two green mountains. She tucked her sari high into her petticoat and waded in as far as she could, the cold water swirling around her legs. Carefully she undid the red cloth around the mouth of the matka. It was almost full with powdery ash, her mother’s charred teeth and bones embedded within. Slowly she tipped them into the river. The grey ashes swirled in the eddies forming around her legs, the blackened bones sank into the dark water. Once it emptied she threw the cloth in, and then the matka. She watched the red earthen pot bob along the waters before it filled and sank.

That was the last of her mother’s body. She splashed her face and wondered if those water drops contained ashes that had been floated further upstream. Like this the whole world was connected. She lingered, balancing on stones, feeling the strong current against her legs as the sun gradually withdrew till the line of trees on top of the opposite mountain. Missing the train now seemed insignificant. She had done what she came to do. Wading to the bank, she arranged her clothes and climbed back up, some of her burden left behind in the green water.

In the taxi she rested her head on the seat and closed her eyes, impervious to the jolts and complaints of the driver—he would have to drive very fast in the growing darkness to make it to Haridwar on time. Only when they arrived at the station did she sit up, pay attention to her surroundings and find that the train was two hours late.

Two hours on the platform, in the first class waiting room, in the restaurant drinking boiled tea, with wavering faith as to whether the train would ever come. The coolie, waiting embedded in the luggage he carried, could gaze vacantly around him for a lifetime, of which only two hours had passed before the whistle announced the train’s arrival, and the platform gathered itself for its assault.

All night Nina was wakeful, lying on the upper berth, absorbing her loss, temporarily soothed by the motion of the train. Soon she would be back in Delhi, in a few days back in Canada. What was there to bring her to India again?

Maybe her parents were together now. Their union had been a success, and the strength of its tie would no doubt continue to operate in their next lives.

Her own existence seemed poor in comparison. With no mother to disappoint, nobody’s expectations to meet, the bonds of her marriage assumed a different feel. Her life was now completely her own responsibility, she could blame no one, turn to no one. She felt adult and bereft at the same time.

xi

Ananda was there to receive her at the airport.

‘How was it?’

The concern brought tears to her eyes. Blinking, she reached for a tissue as he took her trolley.

‘Well, how was it?’ he repeated in the car, pulling out of the car park.

‘Now Ma will never be able to visit.’

‘Who was to know this would happen?’

‘She was still so young.’ Though God knew her mother had stopped being young the day her father died.

Ananda did not reply. His parents could have been called young too.

They drove on in silence.

‘Well, what did you do while I was away,’ she thought to ask eventually.

‘Nothing much. Clearing up some stuff that needed to be cleared.’

‘Oh, well now I am back I can help you.’

He held her hand for a moment, then let it go.

‘I missed you,’ he said.

She sighed, ‘Now there is only you.’

These thoughts remained with her till next morning, when, upon making up the bed she found a wavy blond hair next to her pillow. She would have missed it had she not switched on the bedside light to stare more closely at the picture of her mother placed on the table.

She took it to the window and turned it around. Light glinted on the surface. Its root was darker, the glint must be the effect of dye.

With it still in her hand she sat on the bed. The hair explained much—the distance, the silence, the ticket for two months in India, his strange indifference interspersed with tenderness, the shifty look that skittered about her. She didn’t blame him. His body spoke, when his tongue could not.

Absentmindedly she twisted the hair around her finger. Going to the bathroom she fetched some tissue paper and carefully folded it around the evidence. Then she opened her accounts notebook and taped it to the cover. This way she would always see it, always wonder what to do with it.

So the marriage was based on more than one person’s lies. Discovering this made it worse. Her transgressions had been against a faithful husband, her constant understanding that any exposure would cause ruin and grief.

The yellow hair put paid to all that.

How long? Long enough to explain the absence of the clock? It couldn’t have been before, when he could barely sustain sex with her. She knew he had done it to prove himself, knew as clearly as though he had written a thesis on the subject and dedicated it to her, thus ensuring a reading of every word. This discovery was definitely mistimed. She had just come home the day before. Her mother had died and she was entertaining thoughts of Ananda being her solitary anchor in the world.

Anchors. You had to be your own anchor. By now there was no escaping this knowledge. Still she had been trained to look for them and despite all that had happened, she had not got over the habit. Marry me, love me, above all,
look after me.
Somebody had to be responsible for her, besides herself. That was what women had been led to expect and hardly any price was too high. Loneliness, heartache, denial, all grist to the mill.

Which spirit could grow in these circumstances?

The red account book lay closed on her knee. She was wearing her old faded nightgown. Today was the day she was going to rush off to school, she had missed so much already. Her personal life, the mess that it was, kept intruding into the routine of a Library Science student.

She got up and carefully placed the notebook in a drawer. She would not do anything for now—she couldn’t. The present was calling her attention with too much urgency. Its demands could not be delayed because Ananda had been venturing into the realm of golden hair and white bodies.

During her time away, spring had arrived. Warmer air, bumps on bare branches, clumps of crocuses and snow drops blooming against the walls of houses. Walking to the university, Nina thought of the work she had to do, the colleagues she was going to meet. The Killam was a place to be happy in, despite contamination by Russian peasants.

In ten days, Nina had missed much. There was sympathy in the department, offers to help make up. Anton made a point of coming when he saw her alone and asking if he could assist in any way.

‘After what you did to me, Anton, I don’t believe so.’

‘I’m sorry, really sorry,’ he said eagerly. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

‘Surely you can think of something better? That’s the oldest excuse in the book.’

‘That doesn’t take away its meaning. I’m ashamed of what took place that night. Let’s put it behind us.’

‘Words are cheap.’

‘Come on, Nina, please. After what there was between us, you can’t say I raped you.’

‘I can. You did. In any other situation I would have reported you to the police.’

‘I got carried away—that can happen to anybody. And it was not as though we were—you know—strangers to each other.’

So, he wanted absolution from her, something she would never give. He would have to live with his crime. Coldly she said that he was beneath contempt. Mate or rape was his motto, especially where Indians were concerned. The hurt that crossed his face gave her pleasure. At least she hadn’t fallen victim to his words; instead she had used her own to wound as much as possible.

It was a small victory, but one to savour.

At home she could not respond to Ananda’s pretence that everything was all right. Each time she considered confronting him with his infidelity, she felt the futility. For that to have any real purpose, she would have to confess her own, they would have to examine why they had betrayed each other, they would have to be a woman’s group, knowing that the only way forward was to function with honesty, trust, all judgement withheld.

Was the love between them strong enough to persuade her to venture into this quagmire?

She looked at the cards of her life as she wondered which hand to deal. In any game she would have flung them down and said ‘I pack.’

Pack, pack.

Ananda persisted in his efforts to cheer his wife up. She was taking the New York incident hard. That, followed so closely by the death of her mother, had made her a bit unstable. Repeatedly he told her he understood how bad she felt, he too had gone through similar trauma. Success at work would make her feel better, but she had to give it time.

Nina mumbled an agreement, but did not enter the discussion. Helplessness overtook Ananda. Stubbornly the woman sat there, morose, lugubrious and moody, obstinately refusing to be a different person. The atmosphere in the house was so oppressive he dreaded coming home. He had done so much for her, and all she could do was sit there with a long face and behave like a deprived immigrant.

Life was what you made of it. You could look at a glass and call it half full or half empty. You could look out of the window and see the sky or stare at the mud. How often had he heard his parents make these distinctions between types of people. Well, he knew what manner of person he was. And Nina was definitely his opposite.

He voiced these comparisons. If she had to chose between half full or half empty what would she chose?

She stared at him. What he was insinuating was so clear. Who wouldn’t want to be the half full variety? To warm oneself and others, to become a ray of sunshine? But what did one have to do? Did one have to live with yellow hair under the pillow?

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

‘You are a drifter. One needs some purpose in life. One needs to give back. You are always taking.’

‘To whom should I give back? You? Canada?’

He replied with dignity, ‘I am not talking about myself. But, yes, this country has offered you a lot. Did you get a full scholarship or not? Do you think such a thing is possible in India, or even in the US?’

‘I am sorry, Ananda, I can’t be as grateful as you want me to be. Consider it a character defect.’

He frowned. He hated levity, the kind of cleverness that allowed people to take refuge from serious issues. ‘Many people would kill to be in your position. You have everything, and still you sulk and behave like one of those heroines in the novels you are always reading.’

‘What novel are you referring to? They are not all the same—or maybe you wouldn’t know.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I live in the real world.’

‘And I in the unreal?’

‘You said it, not I.’

‘You think anything not material is worthless. What kind of value system is that?’

Ananda looked angry, then bewildered. He hadn’t married for these kinds of scenes. He was a simple guy. He said as much. If Nina wished to do drama she should go somewhere else.

Nina said nothing. For him all feelings except the most obvious were drama. She could not be happy living on the surface where he floated. For her that was not living at all. But how to explain these things? Either you understood them or you didn’t. Still she couldn’t free herself from her husband. Her sense of security in Canada lay with him.

Ananda kept his own stress close to his heart. He had chosen according to his family’s wishes, but in doing so had experienced a fresh set of difficulties. And how would he not? He was not the boy they had planned for, he was as much someone else as he could possibly be. There was not a single other immigrant like himself that he knew. They all clung to some notion of home, gathered at the India Club, trying to recreate the motherland. That was so bloody stupid. There was more to the West than just a comfortable lifestyle. You had to have the courage of an explorer to step out of the mindset most immigrants mouldered in.

Marriage had been the most significant step in the remaking of his old self. There was no one to appreciate the irony of this. After he married everything changed, his mind, his heart, his penis. In this change his wife had been left far behind. It was not her fault. It was the situation. Given his social position, he hoped it was a temporary situation.

Buds blossomed, leaves emerged, the grass turned green. Nina enjoyed every breath of air, despite her heavy heart. Alas that her own regeneration was not as inevitable as the revolving earth and the tilt of its axis.

She graduated and applied for jobs everywhere but in Halifax.

‘I need to go away and think,’ she told Ananda.

‘Why can’t you think here,’ he demanded. ‘As usual you are making excuses.’

And as usual his way of putting things pissed her off. She stared at him, he looked back at her. These two that fate had brought together through death and marriage. Who did they have besides each other? Yet to a certain extent this country freed emotional needs from the yoke of matrimony and social sanction.

The things that might have made separation in India difficult for Nina were hers to command in Canada. Financial self-sufficiency, rental ease, social acceptability. She hoped independence would facilitate her thought processes. She looked down the path on which there would be no husband and saw the difficulties, the pain, the solitude. Nevertheless treading it was not unimaginable.

‘I need to be by myself,’ she clarified.

‘Away from me. Why don’t you say it?’

‘Yes, away from you.’

He had anticipated the answer, but not the pain.

Her letters of recommendation were glowing, her academic record excellent, the responses she got were encouraging. The University of New Brunswick called her for an interview.

She packed her bags and left for Fredericton on a Greyhound bus. In her bones she knew she would get the job. Interviews had always been easy for her.