Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories Read online

  He could not complain of the marriage. He was very happy with the marriages of all four of his children. They had all made alliances with Christian families of high caste. He had been able to provide handsome dowries for his daughters, and the wives of his sons had brought both wealth and beauty with them. God had been good. It was just a little sad that his elder daughter’s husband was chief government engineer for Tamil Nadu instead of Kerala, and was therefore living in Madras. But at least he saw them and his grandchildren at the annual festival of Onam.

  It was four years since he had seen Kumari. The week after her wedding her husband and his family had returned to America, where they had been living for many years. Only to arrange the marriages of their sons had they come back to Kerala. The arrangements had been made through the mail. Mr Thomas had been content because the family was distantly related on his wife’s side and he had known them many years ago, before they had left for America. Also the son was a professor of chemistry at the university in Burlingtonvermont, which was fitting for his daughter who had her B.A. in English literature. So they had come, the wedding had taken place, and they had gone.

  For four years Mr Matthew Thomas had waited with increasing anxiety. What is a father to think when his daughter does not bear a child in all this time? Now, as God was merciful, a child was coming. Yet she had written: Dear daddy, please do not send the sweet pickle. I am perfectly happy.

  It had been the same when he had expressed his shock at her not having servants. Dear daddy, she had written, you do not understand. Here we are not needing servants. The machines are doing everything. Your daughter and your son-in-law are very happy. Of course this was most reassuring, if only he could really believe it. He worried about the snow and the cold. How was it possible to live with such cold? He worried about the food. The food in America is terrible, some businessmen at the Secretariat had told him. It is having no flavour. In America, they are not using any chili peppers. And yet, even at such a time as this, she did not want the sweet pickle. Could it mean that she had changed, that she had become like a Western woman?

  He looked steadily and intently at the white woman in the room. Certainly, he thought, my daughter will be one of the most beautiful women in America. White women were so unattractive. It was not just their wheat-coloured hair, which did indeed look strange, but they seemed to have no understanding of the proper methods of beauty. They let their hair fly as dry and fluffy as rice chaff at threshing time instead of combing it with coconut oil so that it hung wet and glossy.

  The woman was wearing a sari, which was, without question, better than the other Western women he had sometimes seen at the Mascot Hotel; those women had worn trousers as if they were men. It was amazing that American men allowed their women to appear so ugly. True, he had heard it said that women in the north of India wore trousers, but Mr Thomas did not believe it. An Indian woman would not do such a thing. Once he had seen a white woman in a short dress, of the kind worn by little girls, with half her legs brazenly showing. He had turned away in embarrassment.

  Mr Thomas was pleased that the woman from Burlingtonver- mont was wearing a sari. Still, it did not look right with pale skin and pale hair. It is the best she can do, he concluded to himself. It is simply not possible for them to look beautiful, no matter what they do.

  The thing that was important, and must now be considered was what to do with this manifestation sent by God. The woman from Burlingtonvermont perhaps had all the answers to his questions. Perhaps she could even explain the matter of the sweet pickle. But what to do? One did not speak to a woman outside of the family. And yet why else would it have been arranged that he should have two days to observe this very woman? God would also arrange the solution, he thought simply. He had only to wait.

  As he continued to study that strange pale face an amazing thing happened. A tear rolled slowly down one cheek and fell into the soft folds of the sari. Mr Thomas was shocked and looked away. After a little while, he looked back again. The woman seemed to be holding herself very tightly, as still as death, he thought. Her hands were clasped together in her lap so rigidly that the knuckles showed white. Her eyes were lowered, but the lashes glistened wetly. It must be a matter of love, he thought. Tragic love. Her parents have forbidden the match. For what other reason could a young woman, scarcely more than a girl, be weeping? Then his name was called and he went to the counter.

  At the counter, Mr Chandrashekharan Nair consulted the timetables and folders which would answer the queries of Mr Matthew Thomas. He handled his sheaves of printed information reverently, occasionally pausing to make a small notation in ink in one of the margins, or to dignify a page with one of his rubber stamps. It always gave him a sense of pleasurable power. It was so fitting that the Nairs, who had from ancient times guarded the Maharajah of Travancore and defended his lands, should be as it were the guardians of Kerala in this modern age, watchmen over all the means of entry and egress.

  It had given him particular pleasure to announce the name of Mr Matthew Thomas. It was like the pleasure which comes after a summer’s day of torpid discomfort, when the air is as damp and still as funeral bindings, until the monsoon bursts in a torrent of cool blessing. Just such a salvific release from several days of tension had come when he passed over the name of Miss Jennifer Harper to announce instead that of Mr Matthew Thomas.

  Life was distressingly complicated at the moment for Chandrashekharan Nair, who was twenty-six years old, and who owed his present position to his master’s degree in economics as well as to his uncle who was a regional manager for Air India. The trouble was that two years ago, when he was still a student at the University of Kerala, he had joined one of the Marxist student groups. Well, in a sense joined. They had been an interesting bunch, livelier than other students. Mostly low-caste of course, even Harijans, not the sort of people one usually associated with, and this gave a risqué sense of exhilaration. But the leaders had all been decent fellows from the right families – Nairs, Pillais, Iyers. They read a bit too much for his liking, but the demonstrations had been rather fun, milling along Mahatma Gandhi Road in front of the Secretariat, confusing the traffic, making the withered old buffalo-cart drivers curse, jeering at the occasional American tourist. It was a student sort of thing to do. He had not expected that they would hang on to him in this way. It was beginning to become very embarrassing.

  Of course he was all for progress. He agreed that more had to be done for the poor people. He felt that when he had his own household he would not expect so much from the peon as his father did. They really should not make the boy walk five kilometres each noontime to take young Hari’s lunch to him at college, he thought. It was too much for a twelve-year-old boy.

  In theory, he also agreed with the Marxists about dowry. Nevertheless, when he had studied so hard for his master’s degree, he felt he could expect a lakh of rupees from his bride’s family. That was simple justice. He would be providing her with security and prestige. He had earned the money. Strictly speaking, it was not dowry. Dowries were illegal anyway. It was simply that a girl’s family would be embarrassed not to provide well for her, and a bridegroom from a good family, with a master’s degree into the bargain, had every right to expect that they provide for her in a manner suited to his status.

  Chandrashekharan Nair’s marriage, and his lakh of rupees, was all but arranged. There was one slight problem. The girl’s family was raising questions about his associations with the Marxists. His father had assured them that this had been the passing fancy of a student, wild oats only, but they wanted something more, a public statement or action.

  Chandrashekharan Nair was nervous. One of his cousins, who had held an influential position in the Congress party of Kerala, was now under attack in the newspapers. It was possible that he would have to stand trial for obscure things, and his career would be ruined. It did not seem likely that the Marxists would regain total power in Kerala, but they were
becoming stronger all the time and one should not take chances. It was not wise to be on record for any political opinion, for or against anything. One should always appear knowing but vague, erudite but equivocal.

  Chandrashekharan Nair leafed through the problems in his mind day after day as he leafed through the papers on his desk. The girl’s family was waiting. His own family was waiting. His father was becoming annoyed. It was simply not fair that he should be forced into such a dangerous position. Three days ago some of his former Marxist friends had come to the office. They were jubilant about the Coca-Cola business, and had just erected near the Secretariat a huge billboard showing Coca-Cola bottles toppling onto lots of little American businessmen who were scattering like ants. There was to be a major demonstration and they wanted him to take part.

  All of Chandrashekharan Nair’s anxiety became focused on the American girl who had walked into his office yesterday. It was her fault, the fault of Americans and their Coca-Cola and their independent women, that all these problems had come to plague his life. And then the glimmer of a solution appeared to him. He would make a public statement about Coca-Cola. He would praise the new Indian drink and the name chosen for it. He would mention Gandhi, he would say that this non-violent method, following in Gandhiji’s footsteps, was the correct political way for India. All this was quite safe. Morarji Desai and Raj Narain were saying it in the newspapers every day. The girl’s family would be satisfied. But he would also say a few carefully ambiguous words about American businessmen that would please the Marxists. And as he slid easily over Miss Jennifer Harper’s name, he thought with a surge of delight of how he would tell his Marxist friends in private of his personal triumphant struggle with an imperialist in the Air India office.

  He saw the tear rim down Miss Jennifer Harper’s cheek and frowned with disgust. He felt vindicated. Integrated. Both Hindu and Marxist teachings agreed: compassion and sentiment were signs of weakness. The West was indeed decadent.

  * * *

  Jennifer Harper concentrated all her energy on waiting. There is just this one last ordeal, she promised herself, and even if I have to wait all tomorrow too, it must come to an end. I will not let the staring upset me. There is just this last time.

  After months of conspicuous isolation as the only Western student at the University of Kerala, she was leaving. She wondered how long it would be before her sleep was free of hundreds of eyes staring the endless incurious stare of spectators at a circus. Or at a traffic accident. If one saw the bloodied remains of a total stranger spread across a road, one watched in just that way – with a fascinated absorption, yet removed, essentially unaffected.

  She looked up at the counter with mute resignation. Surely her turn would come today. Inadvertently, she became aware of the intent gaze of the gentleman who had arrived next after her that morning. He also had waited all yesterday, but it did not seem to ruffle him. Nor did he show any sign of the exhausted dejection she had felt. Time means nothing to them, she thought with irritation. She decided to meet his gaze evenly, to stare him into submission.

  He did not seem to notice. Her eyes bounced back off a stare as impenetrable as the packed red clay beneath the coconut palms. She felt as stupid and insignificant as a coconut, a stray green coconut that falls before its time, thuds onto the unyielding earth, and lies ignored, merely something for the scavenger dogs. It was intolerable. She could feel tears pricking her eyes.

  Damn, damn, damn, she thought, pressing her hands together with all the force of her desire not to fall apart from the heat, the exhaustion, the dysentery, the inefficiency, the interminable waiting. Just this one last little thing, she pleaded with her self-respect. Then a name was called, and the impertinent staring gentleman went to the counter. They had missed her name by accident. But what would be the good of attempting to protest? Communication would be a shambles. The clerk would be confident that he was speaking English but would be virtually unintelligible. He would understand almost nothing she was trying to explain. Then she would try her halting Malayalam, but all her velar and palatal rs and ls, and all those impossible ds and ts, would get mixed up, and the people in the room would stare and giggle. Better to wait. He would soon notice that he had omitted a name.

  There was a blare of loudspeakers passing the office. No one paid any attention to it. Every day some demonstration or other muddled the already chaotic traffic of Trivandrum’s main road. If it was not the Marxists, it would be the student unions of the Congress party or the Janata party marching to protest each other’s corruptions. Or it would be the bus drivers on strike, or the teachers picketing the Secretariat, or the rubber workers clamouring for attention, or perhaps just a flower-strewn palanquin bearing the image of some guru or deity.

  The blast from the loudspeaker was so close that those at the counter could not hear one another speak. There was a milling crowd at the Air India doors, which gave way suddenly to the pressure of bodies. Mr Chandrashekharan Nair blanched to see several Marxist leaders. He was going to have to make some snap decision that might have frightening repercussions for the rest of his life. He breathed a prayer to Lord Vishnu.

  Mr Matthew Thomas, who knew that the ways of God were inscrutable but wise, felt that something important was about to happen and waited calmly for it.

  Jennifer Harper thought with despair that the office would now be closed and she would have to come back again the next day.

  The student leader made an impassioned speech in Malayalam, which culminated in a sweeping accusatory gesture toward Jennifer. She rose to her feet as if in the dock. The student advanced threateningly, glared, and said in heavily accented English: ‘’Imperialists out of India!” In equally amateur Malayalam, and in a voice from which she was unable to keep a slight quiver, Jennifer replied, “But I am not an imperialist.”

  There was a wave of laughter, but whether it was directed at her accent or her politics she could not say. Several things happened so quickly that she could never quite remember the order afterward. First, she thought, the gentleman who had stared so hard stepped between herself and the student, protective.

  At the same time, the clerk at the desk had said, with a rather puzzling sense of importance, that he was especially arranging for the American woman to leave the country as quickly as possible. At any rate, she was now in a taxi on her way to the airport with nothing but her return ticket and her pocket-book. Next to the driver in the front seat was the gentleman who had defended her. She was thinking how sweet and easy and simple it was to sacrifice the few clothes and books, the purchased batiks and brasses, left back at the hostel. But the gentleman was saying something.

  “My name is Matthew Thomas and I am having a daughter in Burlingtonvermont. I am hearing you say this place yesterday, and I am thinking perhaps you know my daughter?”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “My daughter … I am missing her very much … She is having a child … There are many things I am not understanding …”

  They talked then, waiting at the airport where the fans were not working and the plane was late. When the boarding call finally came, Jennifer promised: “I will visit your daughter, and I will write. I understand all the things you want to know.”

  Mr Matthew Thomas put his hands on her shoulders in a courteous formal embrace. She was startled and moved. “It is because you are the age of my daughter,” he said, “and because you go to where she is.”

  Mr Chandrashekharan Nair watched the plane circle overhead. He was on his way to the temple of Sree Padmanabhaswamy to receive prasadam and to give thanks to Lord Vishnu. He had just made a most satisfactory report of the incident to the newspaper reporter, and had been able to link it rather nicely to the Coca-Cola issue. It was a most auspicious day.

  The ways of God are truly remarkable, thought Mr Matthew Thomas as he left the airport. To think that the whole purpose behind the education of his wife’s cousin’s
son had been the answer to his prayers about Kumari.

  Jennifer Harper watched the red-tiled flat roofs and the coconut plantations and the rice paddies dwindle into her past. “Oh yes,” she would say casually in Burlington, Vermont. “India. A remarkable country.”

  Ashes to Ashes

  Corpses, that is the answer. Corpses are my future, thought Krishnankutty with elation and smiled upon his bride Saraswathi as they exchanged the garlands of flowers. She was dazzled by the light of his destiny. It is love, she thought, for she had a college degree in English literature and was an avid reader of Barbara Cartland, Victoria Holt, and other English novelists circulated in paperback among the well-educated and well-born young women of Trivandrum. She recognised the bold and dark passion of the foreign-returned man and quivered with delicious fear.

  Krishnankutty took it as an auspicious sign. Corpses, he saw unmistakably, were his karma and his fortune. He had experienced a moment of enlightenment and she had perceived it. After the tying of the tali they held hands in an ecstasy of mutual misunderstanding. They had seen each other only once before, in the presence of others, and neither had been displeased with the parental choice, but nor had either expected such incandescence. It was the prelude to a night of passion. Krishnankutty had read the Kama Sutra while he was a graduate student at MIT – it had been lent to him by his American friend John in a paperback English translation – and that night he laid claim to his Indian heritage. Saraswathi, who had never heard of the Kama Sutra, felt that the glorious mysteries of American sex had been revealed to her.