The Other Language (38 page)

The Khans’ store was busy: right outside, a few African men in overalls were loading bags of cement in the back of a lorry. One young man was weighing a thick coil of rope on a scale next to where Mrs. D’Costa was standing.

She handed the note with the measurements to Kublai and his father. The three of them remained silent for a few seconds, their eyes fixed on the scrap of paper.

“It has to be zinc,” she said. “Sealed. That’s the procedure required to carry the body on a plane,” she said.

“No problem, Mrs. D’Costa. We’ll get it ready by tomorrow,” Kublai said, and scribbled something on a piece of paper.

She had offered to take care of this. It seemed a practical thing, something that she could handle easily, and she was happy to spare Mark and Tim the ride to the junction for such a gruesome task.

Mr. Khan leaned in over the counter and removed his reading glasses from the tip of his nose.

“Why not the Hindu crematorium in town? We could have helped them, we know the people who work there. Ashes would have been so much easier to carry. Once in England they could have whatever ceremony they wish.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. But the family wants to bring the body back. To their home, and put it underground, in British soil. It’s their way.”

Later, as she was getting ready to reverse the car and head home, she saw Mr. Khan with his wobbly gait exiting the store.

“Mrs. D’Costa! Wait!”

She left the keys in the ignition and stepped out, her car idling under the midmorning sun.

“Yes, Mr. Khan?”

He held out his hand to show her the cluster of white flowers he was clutching between his fingers.

“In Gujarat we call them Barsoli flowers. My mother planted them in our garden when she got married to my father. She had the seeds sent here from India. Nobody else has a tree like this in all of Kenya. Smell.”

The scent was deliciously sweet.

“My mother would wear one of these every night behind her ear. The flowers lasted only a few hours.”

“What a beautiful habit,” Mrs. D’Costa said.

“She planted the seeds in our garden so she’d have her personal supply in this country for the rest of her life.” He held the flower
up to his nose. “And to remind herself that all things are impermanent.”

He pulled a tiny envelope out of his breast pocket.

“I have collected some seeds for you. I know how much you like gardening.”

“Thank you, Mr. Khan. What a kind thought.”

Then, unexpectedly, he lifted a strand of her hair and slid the flower behind her ear.

There was a pause, then he bowed his head slightly. Mrs. D’Costa brushed the flower with the tip of her finger.

As she drove back home she kept glancing in the rearview mirror to see the white blossom in her hair.

She took the turn into the plantation at the back of her and the Dobsons’ plot of land. Yes, some of the coconut trees were dying, it was true. She had been noticing more and more naked stumps dotting the horizon. Tim’s comment about the place being jinxed had disturbed her. Trees die too when they age, and these coconuts were planted a very long time ago, she should’ve told him. It was natural. Would that have silenced him?

Tim was right, Margie didn’t belong here. None of them did, Anne thought. It was a much better idea to take her back to England after all, even though she didn’t know anybody there.

Once all the Dobsons had left and she’d be able to go back to her routine, she would ask Mr. Khan to her Sunday curry lunch. Maybe she’d inquire if he liked cards or mah-jongg and they could sometimes play a game or two. It was such a comfort to know someone like him and his son. He and Kublai were always so kind and thoughtful. She turned into her driveway and immediately heard Pickle’s and Chutney’s cheerful barking. Hamisi was waiting by the gate, ready to open it for her.

Such a nice, good family, the Khans, she thought. Just like the family she once had.

The Italian System

Spring landed on her like an avalanche. Walking through Central Park she heard birds chirping in the trees, as though they’d just returned from a long voyage and now were busy-busy, getting their nests ready for the new season.

The buds on the cherry trees were ready to burst, the tiny leaves sprouting from the branches, so fine they were almost transparent, like a baby’s fingers on an ultrasound. Everything around her was primed for rebirth.

She thought she too might be ready for a change of scene.

She had come to New York seven years earlier with a rather ambitious plan. While still in Rome, she’d applied online for a summer workshop in creative writing at the New School. It was an expensive course, but she’d saved some money just for that. She’d always had a notion that one day she’d write a novel but she knew she’d never start unless she developed a technique and got some encouragement. She’d always admired the pragmatic approach Americans took, even on those subjects—like art, literature, acting, music—that Europeans regarded as too elusive, or impossible to define, and therefore to teach. Americans believed there was a method for everything, and they were right; hadn’t they succeeded in all those fields in which the Europeans, with their snobbish talk of talent and inspiration, were now beginning to fade?

As soon as she set foot in Manhattan she decided that she
didn’t want to leave it, ever. It was a
coup de foudre
. She felt light, full of promise. In New York she realized she had no witnesses, no memories, just a brilliant, spectacular stretch of future in front of her.

The summer course at the New School eventually came to an end and she had no more money to invest in her education as a writer. She found a part-time job in a language school. It started as a way to pay the rent on the place in Brooklyn she shared with another girl. With time, teaching became her real job and she forgot about other aspirations; to her what mattered most was that she had found a way to stay in New York.

But lately she’d begun to feel an undercurrent nagging at her throughout the day, an insidious feeling of frustration that hovered above while she was asleep, and which confronted her first thing each morning when she opened her eyes.

Ever since she’d arrived in the city she’d tried very hard to become an American, but it had proved hard to blend in. It wasn’t just the accent or the mispronunciation of difficult words that singled her out, it was a question of attitude. Of posture, even.

New York was a city of foreigners, everyone came from some other place just as in Rome, where she had been born and raised. People had come to Imperial Rome to seek fortune and fame from its farthest colonies under Augustus, and exotic people had done the same in New York before the age of Abraham Lincoln. The flow had never stopped.

Yet a foreigner always remains a foreigner, no matter how long he’s been away from his native place. Like the Chinese students at Columbia, the Korean grocers and the Latino hairdressers, like the Ukrainian waitresses and the Greek cooks, the Afghan and the Sikh taxi drivers, she still thought of her grandmother’s food as superior to anyone else’s, and like all of them, despite their perfect grasp of English, she dreamed in a different language. She knew
that these people, even the ones who had been born on American soil, were prey to a nostalgia for faraway places, some they’d never even been to and may never even see. Such is the strength of the seed implanted in us at birth, she thought, as she exited the Q train at Lexington Avenue and waded through the late afternoon rush hour crowd on the way to teach the first class of the day.

Whenever she walked along the streets of Manhattan, she looked at all the different faces coming toward her and, despite their different features and colors, she regarded them all as Americans. None of them seemed a stranger to the city. How at ease they looked on the train, underneath their books, Kindles, iPods and iPads, at the wheel of the taxi, behind the counter of the coffee shop, at the gym or inside the beauty parlor! On the other hand, she, even after all these years, still felt self-conscious, afraid of making a faux pas. She came to feel that this was the inherent condition of anybody unmoored from the familiar, and living in a place that is home to others.

And yet here was a riddle she couldn’t figure out: Why did that look of disorientation and vulnerability she knew was stamped on her face seem invisible on everyone else’s?

That day in the park, sitting on a bench under the trees bursting with their promise of bloom, she felt a breeze of optimism caress her face.

All right, she thought, like those birds building a nest, I’m going to start something new.

Maybe, in the early hours of the morning, before going to work, she could try to jot down the introduction to the book she’d been thinking about for months. Her plan was still nebulous but at least she had a good title. It said it all, and though she had forgotten a lot of the rules she had learned at the creative writing
course, what if she just followed her instinct and started from that?

Italians are always described as warm, stylish, fun, passionate, charming, life-loving people. What is their secret?