The Inheritance of Loss (22 page)

Biju had left the basement in Harlem one early morning when the leaves of the scraggly tree outside were an orange surprise, supple and luminous. He had one bag with him and his mattress—a rectangle of foam with egg crate marking rolled into a bundle and tied with string. Before he packed, he took one more look at his parents’ wedding photo that he had brought from India, the color leaching out; it was, by now, a picture of two serious ghosts. Just as he was about to go, Jacinto, who always appeared for his rent at the right moment, came around the corner: "Adios adios," gold tooth flashing a miner’s delight.

Biju looked back for the last time at that facade of former respectability deteriorating. In the distance stood Grant’s tomb like a round gray funeral cake with barbarous trim. Closer, the projects were a dense series of bar graphs against the horizon.

At the Gandhi Café, amid oversized pots and sawdusty sacks of masalas, he set up his new existence. The men washed their faces and rinsed their mouths over the kitchen sink, combed their hair in the postage stamp mirror tacked above, hung their trousers on a rope strung across the room, along with the dishtowels. At night they unrolled their bedding wherever there was room.

The rats of his earlier jobs had not forsaken Biju. They were here, too, exulting in the garbage, clawing through wood, making holes that Harish-Harry stuffed with steel wool and covered with bricks, but they moved such petty obstructions aside. They were drinking milk just like the billboards told them, eating protein; vitamins and minerals spilled out of their invincible ears and claws, their gums and fur. Kwarshikov, beri beri, goiter (that in Kalimpong had caused a population of mad toad throated dwarves to roam the hillside), such deficiency disorders were unknown to such a population.

One chewed Biju’s hair at night.

"For its nest," said Jeev. "It’s expecting, I think."

They took to creeping up and sleeping on the tables. At daybreak they shuffled back down before Harish arrived, "
Chalo, chalo,
another day, another dollar."

________

Toward his staff Harish-Harry was avuncular, jocular, but he could suddenly become angry and disciplinary. "Shuddap, keep shut," he’d say, and he wasn’t above smacking their heads. But when an American patron walked through the door, his manner changed instantly and drastically into another thing and a panic seemed to overcome him.

"Hallo Hallo," he said to a pink satin child smearing food all over the chair legs, "Ya givin your mom too much trouble, ha ha? But one day ya make her feel proud, right? Gointa be a beeeg man, reech man, vhat you say? Ya vanna nice cheekan karry?" He smiled and genuflected.

Harish-Harry—the two names, Biju was learning, indicated a deep rift that he hadn’t suspected when he first walked in and found him, a manifestation of that clarity of principle which Biju was seeking. That support for a cow shelter was in case the Hindu version of the afterlife turned out to be true and that, when he died, he was put through the

Hindu machinations of the beyond. What, though, if other gods sat upon the throne? He tried to keep on the right side of power, tried to be loyal to so many things that he himself couldn’t tell which one of his selves was the authentic, if any.

________

It wasn’t just Harish-Harry. Confusion was rampant among the "
haalf ‘n’
haf
"

crowd, the Indian students coming in with American friends, one accent one side of the mouth, another the other side; muddling it up, wobbling then, downgrading sometimes all the way to Hindi to show one another: Who? No, no, it was not they pretending to be other than who and what they were. They weren’t the ones turning their back on the greatest culture the world has ever seen. . . .

And the romances—the Indian-White combination, in particular, was a special problem.

The
desis
entered feeling very ill at ease and the waiters began to smirk and sneer, raising their eyebrows to show them what they thought.

"Hot, medium, or mild?" they asked. "Hot," the patrons said invariably, showing off, informing their date they were the unadulterated exotic product, and in the kitchen they laughed, "Ha ha," then suddenly the unadulterated anger came out, "
sala!
"

The evildoers bit into the vindaloo—

And that vindaloo—it bit them back.

Faces smarting, ears and eyes burning, tongues becoming numb, they whimpered for yogurt, explaining to the table, "That is what we do in India, we always eat yogurt for the balance. . . ."

The balance, you know. . . .

You know, you know—

Hot cool, sweet sour, bitter pungent, the ancient wisdom of the Ayurveda that can grant a person complete poise. . . .

"Too hot?" Biju would ask, grinning.

Weeping, "No, no."

There was no purity in this venture. And no pride. He had come home to no clarity of vision.

________

Harish-Harry blamed his daughter for rattling his commitment. The girl was becoming American. Nose ring she found compatible with combat boots and clothes in camouflage print from the army-navy surplus.

His wife said, "All this nonsense, what is this, give her two tight slaps, that’s what. . . ."

"Good you did like that," he had said, but slaps had not worked. "You go, girl!" he said, trying to rise, instead, to the occasion of his daughter being American. "You GO, gurllll!!!" But that didn’t work either. "I didn’t ask to be born," she said. "You had me for your own selfish reasons, wanted a servant, didn’t you? But in this country, Dad, nobody’s going to wipe your ass for free."

Not even
bottom!
Wipe your
ass! Dad!
Not even
Papaji.
No wipe your bottom,
Papaji.
Dad and ass. Harish-Harry got drunk in an episode that would become familiar and tedious; he sat at the cash register and wouldn’t go home, though the kitchen staff were anxiously waiting so they could get up on the tables and sleep wrapped in the tablecloths. "And they think we admire them!"

He began to laugh. "Every time one enters my shop I smile"—he showed his skeleton grin—"‘Hi, how ya doin,’ but all I want is to break their necks. I can’t, but maybe my son will, and that is my great hope. One day Jayant-Jay will smile and get his hands about their sons’ necks and he will choke them dead."

"See, Biju, see what this world is," he said and began to weep with his arm on Biju’s shoulder.

________

It was only the recollection of the money he was making that calmed him. Within this thought he found a perfectly reasonable reason for being here, a morality to agree on, a bridge over the split—and this single fact that didn’t seem a contradiction between nations he blazoned forth.

"Another day another dollar, penny saved is penny earned, no pain no gain, business is business, gotta do what ya gotta do." These axioms were a luxury unavailable to Biju, of course, but he repeated them anyway, enjoying the cheerful words and the moment of camaraderie.

"Have to make a living, what can you do?" Biju would say.

"You are right, Biju. What can I do? Here we are," he ruminated, "for more opportunity. How can we help it?"

He hoped for a big house, then he hoped for a bigger house even if he had to leave it unfurnished for a while, like his nemesis Mr. Shah who owned seven rooms, all empty except for TV, couch, and carpeting in white. Even the TV was a white TV for white symbolized success out of India for the community. "Hae hae, we will take our time with the furniture," said Mr. Shah, "but house is there."

Photos of the exterior had been

sent to all the relatives in Gujarat, a white car parked in front. A Lexus, that premier luxury vehicle. On top of it sat his wife looking self-satisfied. She had left India a meek bride, scrolled and spattered with henna, so much gold in her sari she set off every metal detector in the airport—and now here she was—white pantsuit, bobbed hair, vanity case, and capable of doing the macarena.

Twenty-five

They took Mutt
to the Apollo Deaf Tailors to be measured for a winter coat that would be cut out of a blanket, since the days had passed into winter, and while it didn’t snow in Kalimpong, just turned dull, all around the snow line dipped, and the high mountains around town were brindled white. In the morning, they found frost in the runnels, frost on the crest, and frost in the crotch of the hills.

Through cracks and holes in Cho Oyu, came a sterile smell of winter. The bathroom taps and switches threw off shocks. Sweaters and shawls bristled with aroused fibers, shedding lightning. "Ow ow," Sai said. Her skin was a squamous pattern of drought. When she took off her clothes, dry skin fell like salt from a salt cellar and her hair, ridiculing gravity, rose in crackling radio antennae above her skull. When she smiled, her lips split and spilled blood.

Vaselined shiny and supple for Christmas, she joined Father Booty and Uncle Potty at Mon Ami, where, in addition to the Vaseline smell, there was an odor of wet sheep—but it was only their damp sweaters. A thatch of tinsel on a potted fir glinted in the light of the fire that razzmatazzed and popped, the cold smarting beyond.

Father Booty and Uncle Potty sang together:

Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?

When nobody answered, they shouted all the louder—

WHO THREW THE OVERALLS IN MRS. MURPHY’S CHOWDER??

And they all joined in, drunk and wild.

________

Oh, beautiful evening—

Oh, beautiful soup in the copper Gyako pot, a moat of broth around the chimney of coals, mutton steam in their hair, rollicking shimmer of golden fat, dried mushrooms growing so slippery they’d slither down scalding before you could chomp upon their muscle. "What’s for PUDS?" Lola, when she said this in England, had been unsettled to find that the English didn’t understand. . . . Even Pixie had pretended to be bewildered. . . .

But here they comprehended perfectly, and Kesang lugged out a weighty pudding that united via brandy its fraternity of fruit and nut, and they made the pudding holy with a sanctifying crown of brandy flame.

Mustafa climbed to his favorite place again, on Sai’s lap, turning first his face to the fire, then his behind, slowly softening, until his bottom began to dribble down the chair and he leaped up with a startled yowl, glaring at Sai as if she had been responsible for this indecency.

For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England—various things that looked as if they might taste of mints—snowflakes, snowmen, icicles, stars. There were little trolls, and elf shoemakers (why were cobblers, trolls, and elves, Christmasy? Sai wondered) that were stored the rest of the year inside a Bata shoe box up in the attic along with the story of the English ghost in a flouncy nightie with whom they used to scare Sai when she first arrived:

"What does she say?"

"Hmm, I think she makes a
whoo hoo
like an owl, whistling low,
whoo hooo,
sweet and serious. And now and then she says, ‘Care for a drop of sh-e-rr-y, mye dee-a-r?’ In an unsteady, but highly cultivated voice."

And there were presents of knitted socks from the Tibetan refugee village, the wool still with bits of straw and burrs that provided authenticity and aroused extra sympathy for refugees even while it irritated the toes. There were amber and coral earrings, bottles of homemade apricot brandy made by Father Booty, books to write in with translucent sheets of

rice paper, and ribbed bamboo spines made in Bong Busti by a tableful of chatty lady employees sharing the tasty things in their tiffins at lunch, who sometimes dropped a pickle . . . and sometimes the pages had a festive yellow splotch. . . .

________

More rum. Deeper into Lola’s intoxication, when the fire died low, she became serene, drew a pure memory from the depths:

"In those old days, in the fifties and sixties," she said, "it was still a long journey into Sikkim or Bhutan, for there were hardly any roads. We used to travel on horseback, carrying sacks of peas for the ponies, maps, hip flasks of whiskey. In the rainy season, leeches would free-fall from the trees onto us, timing precisely the perfect acrobat moment. We would wash in saltwater to keep them off, salt our shoes and socks, even our hair. The storms would wash the salt off and we’d have to stop and salt ourselves again. The forests at that time were fierce and enormous—if you were told a magical beast lived there, you’d believe it. We’d emerge to the tops of mountains where monasteries limpet to the sides of rock, surrounded by chortens and prayer flags, the white facades catching the light of the sunset, all straw gold, the mountains rugged lines of indigo. We’d stand and rest until the leeches began working into our socks. Buddhism was ancient here, more ancient than it was anywhere else, and we went to a monastery that had been built, they said, when a flying lama had flown from one mountaintop to another, from Menak Hill to Enchey, and another that had been built when a rainbow connected Kanchenjunga to the crest of the hill. Often the gompas were deserted for the monks were also farmers; they were away at their fields and gathered only a few times a year for
pujas
and all you could hear was the wind in the bamboo. Clouds came through the doors and mingled with paintings of clouds. The interiors were dark, smoke-stained, and we’d try to make out the murals by the light of butter lamps. . . .