The Unknown Errors of Our Lives Read online

  Leela opens her mouth to say she is sorry about how Mrs. Das has been treated. But she hears herself saying, “I’m going back with you.” The dazed expression on Mrs. Das’s face mirrors her own inner state. When after a moment Mrs. Das warily asks her why, all she can do is shrug her shoulders. She is uncertain of her motives. Is it her desire to prove (but to whom?) that she is somehow superior to the others? Is it pity, an emotion she has always distrusted? Is it some inchoate affinity she feels toward this stranger? But if you believe in destiny, no one can be a stranger, can they? There’s always a connection, a reason because of which people enter your orbit, bristling with dark energy like a meteor intent on collision.

  TRAVELING DOWN a mountain trail fringed by fat, seeded grasses the same gray as the sky, Leela wants to ask Mrs. Das about destiny. Whether she believes in it, what she understands it to encompass. But Mrs. Das grips the saddle of the mule she is sitting on, her body rigid with the single-minded terror of a person who has never ridden an animal. Ahead, the guide’s young, scraggly-bearded son whistles a movie tune Leela remembers having heard in another world, during an excursion with Aunt Seema to some Calcutta market.

  Aunt Seema was terribly upset with Leela’s decision to accompany Mrs. Das—no, even with that intense adverb, upset is too simple a word to describe the change in her urbane aunt, who had taken such gay control of Leela’s life in the city. The new Aunt Seema wrung her hands and lamented, “But what would your mother say if she knew that I let you go off alone with some stranger?” (Did she really believe Leela’s mother would hold her responsible? The thought made Leela smile.) Aunt’s face was full of awful conviction as she begged Leela to reconsider. Breaking off a pilgrimage like this, for no good reason, would rouse the wrath of Shiva. When Leela said that the occurrences of her life were surely of no interest to a deity, Aunt gripped her shoulders with trembling hands.

  “Stop!” she cried, her nostrils flaring. “You don’t know what you’re saying! That bad-luck woman, she’s bewitched you!”

  How many unguessed layers there were to people, skins that came loose at an unexpected tug, revealing raw, fearful flesh. Amazing, that folks could love one another in the face of such unreliability! It made Leela at once sad and hopeful.

  WALKING DOWNHILL, LEELA has drifted into a fantasy. In it, she lives in a small rooftop flat on the outskirts of Calcutta. Mrs. Das, whom she has rescued from the women’s hostel, lives with her. They have a maid who shops and runs their errands, so the women rarely need to leave the flat. Each evening they sit on the terrace beside the potted roses and chrysanthemums (Mrs. Das has turned out to be a skillful gardener) and listen to music—a tape of Bengali folk songs (Mrs. Das looks like a person who would enjoy that), or maybe one of Leela’s jazz CDs to which Mrs. Das listens with bemused attention. When they wish each other good night, she touches Leela’s arm. “Thank you,” she says, her eyes deep as a forest.

  They have come to a riverbed. There isn’t much water, but the boulders on which they step are slippery with moss. It’s starting to rain, and the guide eyes the sky nervously. He pulls at the balking mule, which stumbles. Mrs. Das gives a harsh, crowlike cry and flings out her hand. Leela grasps it and holds on until they reach the other side.

  “Thank you,” says Mrs. Das. It is the first time she has smiled, and Leela sees that her eyes are, indeed, deep as a forest.

  “BUT, MADAM!” THE proprietor at the Nataraja inn cries to Leela in an English made shaky by distress. “You people are not to be coming back for two more days! Already I am giving your rooms to other pilgrim party. Whole hotel is full. This is middle of pilgrim season—other hotels are also being full.” He gives Leela and Mrs. Das, who are shivering in their wet clothes, an accusing look. “How is it you two are returned so soon?”

  The guide, who has brought in the bedrolls, says something in a rapid Pahari dialect that Leela cannot follow. The clerk pulls back his head in a swift, turtlelike motion and gives Mrs. Das a glance full of misgiving.

  “Please,” Leela says. “We’re very tired, and it’s raining. Can’t you find us something?”

  “Sorry, madams. Maybe Mughal Gardens in marketplace is having space. . . .”

  Leela can feel Mrs. Das’s placid eyes on her. It is obvious that she trusts the younger woman to handle the situation. Leela sighs. Being a savior in real life has drawbacks she never imagined in her rooftop fantasy. Recalling something Aunt Seema said earlier, she digs in the waistband of her sari and comes up with a handful of rupee notes which she lays on the counter.

  The clerk rocks back on his heels, torn between avarice and superstition. Then his hand darts out and covers the notes. “We are having a small-small storeroom on top of hotel. Big enough for one person only.” He parts his lips in an ingenuous smile. “Maybe older madam can try Mughal Gardens?”

  Leela gives him a reprimanding look. “We’ll manage,” she says.

  THE CLERK HAS not exaggerated. The room, filled with discarded furniture, is about as big as Leela’s queen-size bed in America. Even after the sweeper carries all the junk out into the corridor, there isn’t enough space to open the two bedrolls without their edges overlapping. Leela tries to hide her dismay. It strikes her that since she arrived in India, she has not been alone even once. With sudden homesickness, she longs for her wide, flat bedroom, its uncomplicated vanilla walls, its window from which she had looked out on to nothing more demanding than a clump of geraniums.

  “I’ve caused you a lot of inconvenience.”

  Mrs. Das’s voice is small but not apologetic. (Leela rather likes this.) “You shouldn’t have come back with me,” she adds matter-of-factly. “What if I am bad luck, like people believe?”

  “Do you believe that?” Leela asks. She strains to hear Mrs. Das’s answer above the crash of thunder.

  “Belief, disbelief.” Mrs. Das shrugs. “So many things I believed to be one way turned out otherwise. I believed my son’s marriage wouldn’t change things between us. I believed I would get to Shiva’s shrine, and all my problems would disappear. Last night on the mountain I believed the best thing for me would be to fall into a crevasse and die.” She smiles with unexpected sweetness as she says this. “But now—here we are together.”

  Together. When Mrs. Das says it in Bengali, eksangay, the word opens inside Leela with a faint, ringing sound, like a distant temple bell.

  “I have something I want to give you,” Mrs. Das says.

  “No, no,” says Leela, embarrassed. “Please, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “He who gives,” says Mrs. Das, “must be prepared to receive.” Is this an ancient Indian saying, or one that she has made up herself? And what exactly does it mean? Is giving then a privilege, in return for which you must allow others the opportunity to do the same? Mrs. Das unclasps a thin gold chain she is wearing. She leans forward and Leela feels her fingers fumbling for a moment on the nape of her neck. She wants to protest, to explain to Mrs. Das that she has always hated jewelry, all that metal clamped around you. But she is caught in a web of unfamiliar ideas. Is giving the touchstone by which the lives of strangers become your own? The expression on Mrs. Das’s face is secretive, prayerful. And then the skin-warm, almost weightless chain is around Leela’s throat.

  Mrs. Das switches off the naked bulb that hangs on a bit of wire from the ceiling. The two of them lie down, each on her blanket, and listen to the wind, which moans and rattles the shutters like a madwoman wanting to be let in. Leela hopes Aunt Seema is safe, that the storm has not hit the mountain the way it has Pahelgaon. But the world outside this square, contained room has receded so far that she is unable to feel anxiety. Rain falls all around her, insulating as a lullaby. If she were to stretch out her arm, she would touch Mrs. Das’s face.

  She says, softly, “Once I tried to kill myself.”

  Mrs. Das says nothing. Perhaps she is asleep.

  Leela finds herself speaking of the pills, the ambulance, the scraped-out space inside her afterward. Per
haps it had always been there, and she had not known? She talks about her father and mother, their unbearable courtesy, which she sees only this moment as having been unbearable. She asks questions about togetherness, about being alone. What the value of each might be. She sends her words into the night, and does not need a reply.

  She has never spoken so much in her life. In the middle of a sentence, she falls asleep.

  LEELA IS DREAMING. In the dream, the glacial trails have been washed away by rain. She takes a false step, sinks into slush. Ice presses against her chest. She opens her mouth to cry for help, and it, too, fills with ice. With a thunderous crack, blackness opens above her, a brilliant and brutal absence of light. She knows it has found her finally, her unlucky star.

  Leela wakes, her heart clenched painfully like an arthritic fist. How real the dream was. Even now she feels the freezing weight on her chest, hears the ricochet of the cracked-open sky. But, no, it is not just a dream. Her blanket is soaked through, and the floor is awash with water. She scrabbles for the light switch and sees, in the dim glare, a corner of the roof hanging down, swinging drunkenly. In the midst of all this, Mrs. Das sleeps on, covers pulled over her head. Leela is visited by a crazy wish to lie down beside her.

  “Quick, quick!” she cries, shaking her. “We have to get out of here before that roof comes down.”

  Mrs. Das doesn’t seem to understand what Leela wants from her. Another gust of wind hits the roof, which gives an ominous creak. Her eyes widen, but she makes no move to sit up.

  “Come on,” shouts Leela. She starts to drag her to the door. Mrs. Das offers neither resistance nor help. A long time back Leela had taken a CPR course, she has forgotten why. Mrs. Das’s body, slack and rubbery, reminds her of the dummy on whose chest she had pounded with earnest energy. The thought depresses her, and this depression is the last emotion she registers before something hits her head.

  LEELA LIES ON a lumpy mattress. Even with her eyes closed, she knows that the clothes she is wearing—a baggy blouse, a limp cotton sari which swathes her loosely—are not hers. Her head feels stuffed with steel shavings. Is she in heaven, having died a heroic death? But surely celestial bedding would be more comfortable, celestial clothing more elegant—even in India? She is ashamed of having thought that last phrase. She moves her head a little. The jab of pain is like disappointed lightning.

  “Doctor, doctor, she’s waking up,” Aunt Seema says from somewhere, her voice damp and wobbly like a cracker that’s been dunked in tea. But why is Leela thinking like this? She knows she should appreciate her aunt’s loving concern and say something to reassure her. But it is so private, so comfortable, behind her closed eyes.

  “Finally,” says the doctor’s voice. “I was getting worried.” Leela can smell his breath—it’s cigarettes, a brand she does not know. It smells of cloves. When she has forgotten everything else, she thinks, she will remember the odors of this journey.

  “Can you hear me, Leela?” the doctor asks. “Can you open your eyes?” He taps on her cheek with maddening persistence until she gives up and glares at him.

  “You’re lucky, young lady,” he says as he changes the bandage around her head. “You should be thankful you were hit by a piece of wood. Now if that had been a sheet of rusted metal—”

  Lucky. Thankful. Leela doesn’t trust such words. They change their meaning as they swoop, sharp-clawed, about her head. The room is full of women; they wring their hands in gestures that echo her aunt’s. She closes her eyes again. There’s a question she must ask, an important one—but when she tries to catch it in a net of words, it dissolves into red fog.

  “It’s all my fault,” Aunt Seema says in a broken voice that baffles Leela. Why should Aunt feel so much distress at problems which are, after all, hers alone? “Leela doesn’t understand these things—how can she?—but I should have made her stay away from that accursed woman. . . .”

  “Do try to be quiet.” The doctor’s voice is testy, as though he has heard this lament many times already. “Give her the medicine and let her rest.”

  Someone holds Leela’s head, brings a cup to her lips. The medicine is thick and vile. She forces it down her throat with harsh satisfaction. Aunt sobs softly, in deference to the doctor’s orders. Her friends murmur consolations. From time to time, phrases rise like a refrain from their crooning: The poor girl, Shiva have mercy, that bad-luck woman, oh, what will I tell your mother.

  A commotion at the door.

  “I’ve got to see her, just for a minute, just to make sure she’s all right—”

  There’s a heaving inside Leela.

  “No,” says one of the women. “Daktar-babu said, no excitement.”

  “Please, I won’t talk to her—I’ll just take a look.”

  “Over my dead body you will,” Aunt Seema bursts out. “Haven’t you done her enough harm already? Go away. Leela, you tell her yourself . . .”

  Leela doesn’t want to tell anyone anything. She wants only to sleep. Is that too much to ask for? A line comes to her from a poem, Death’s second self which seals up all in rest. She imagines snow, great fluffy quilts of it, packed around her. But the voices scrape at her, Leela, Leela, Leela.

  The room is full of evening. Leela sees Mrs. Das at the door, trying to push her way past the determined bulk of the doctor’s wife. Her disheveled hair radiates from her head like crinkly white wires, giving her, for a moment, the look of an alien in a Star Trek movie. When she sees that Leela’s eyes are open, she stops struggling and reaches out toward her.

  Why does Leela do what she does next? Is it the medication, which makes her light-headed? The pain, which won’t let her think? Or is it some dark, genetic strain which, unknown to her, has pierced her pragmatic American upbringing with its sharp, knotted root? At times, later, she will tell herself, I didn’t know what I was doing. At other times, she’ll say, Liar. For doesn’t her response to Mrs. Das come from the intrinsic and fearful depths of who she is? The part of her that knows she is no savior?

  Leela sits up in bed. “Aunt’s right,” she says. Her teeth chatter as though she is fevered. “All of them are right. You are cursed. Go away. Leave me alone.”

  “No,” says Mrs. Das. But it is a pale sound, without conviction.

  “Yes!” says Leela. “Yes!” She grasps the chain Mrs. Das has given her and yanks at it. The worn gold gives easily. Falling, it makes a small, skittery sound on the wood floor.

  Darkness is bursting open around Leela like black chrysanthemums.

  Mrs. Das stares at the chain, then turns and stumbles from the room. Her shadow, long and misshapen, touches Leela once. Then it, too, is gone.

  THE PILGRIMAGE PARTY makes much of Leela as she lies recovering. The women bring her little gifts from their forays into town—an embroidered purse, a bunch of Kashmiri grapes, a lacquered jewelry box. When they hold out the presents, Leela burrows her hands into her blanket. But the women merely nod to each other. They whisper words like shock and been through so much. They hand the gifts to Aunt, who promises to keep them safely until Leela is better. When they leave, she feels like a petulant child.

  From the doorway, the men ask Aunt Seema how Leela is coming along. Their voices are gruff and hushed, their eyes furtive with awe—as though she were a martyr-saint who took upon herself the bad luck that would have otherwise fallen on them. Is it cynical to think this? There is no one any more whom Leela can ask.

  ON THE WAY back to Srinagar, where the party will catch the train to Calcutta, by unspoken consent Leela is given the best seat on the bus, up front near the big double windows.

  “It’s a fine view, and it won’t joggle you so much,” says one of the women, plumping up a pillow for her. Another places a foot rest near her legs. Aunt Seema unscrews a Thermos and pours her a glass of pomegranate juice—to replace all the blood Leela lost, she says. The juice is the color of blood. Its thin tartness makes Leela’s mouth pucker up, and Aunt says, in a disappointed voice, “Oh, dear, is it not so sweet
then? Why, that Bahadur at the hotel swore to me . . .”

  Leela feels ungracious, boorish. She feels angry for feeling this way. “I have a headache,” she says and turns to the window where, hidden behind her sunglasses, she watches the rest of the party get on the bus. Amid shouts and laughter, the bus begins to move.

  She waits until the bus has lurched its way around three hairpin bends. Then she says, “Aunt . . . ?” She tries to make her voice casual, but the words come out in a croak.

  “Yes, dear? A little more juice?” Aunt asks hopefully.

  “Where is Mrs. Das? Why didn’t she get on the bus?”

  Aunt fiddles with the catch of her purse. Her face indicates her discomfort at the baldness of Leela’s questions. A real Indian woman would have known to approach the matter delicately, sideways.

  But the doctor’s wife, who is sitting behind them, leans forward to say, “Oh, her! She went off somewhere on her own, when was it, three, no, four nights ago, right after she created that ruckus in your sickroom. She didn’t take her bedroll with her, or even her suitcase. Strange, no? Personally, I think she’s a little bit touched up here.” She taps her head emphatically.

  Misery swirls, acidic, through Leela’s insides. She raises her hand with great effort to cover her mouth, so it will not spill out.

  “Are you okay, dear?” Aunt asks.

  “She looks terribly pale,” the doctor’s wife says. “It’s all these winding roads—enough to make anyone vomity.”

  “I might have some lemon drops,” says Aunt, rummaging in her handbag.

  Leela accepts the sour candy and turns again to the window. Behind her she hears the doctor’s wife’s carrying whisper: “If I were you, I’d get a puja done for your niece once you get to Calcutta. You know, to avert the evil eye . . .”

  Outside the bus, mountains and waterfalls are speeding past Leela. Sunlight slides like opportunity from the narrow green leaves of debdaru trees and is lost in the underbrush. What had the guide said, at the start of the trip, about expiation? Leela cannot remember. And even if she did, would she be capable of executing those gestures, delicate and filled with power, like the movements of a Bharatnatyam dancer, which connect humans to the gods and to each other? Back in America, her life waits to claim her, unchanged, impervious, smelling like floor polish. In the dusty window, her reflection is a blank oval. She takes off her dark glasses to see better, but the features which peer back at her are unfamiliar, as though they belong to someone she has never met.