Don't Let Him Know (26 page)

‘Amit, talk to me.’ June sounded worried as she went through his socks and underwear drawer later that evening. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Nothing.’ He picked at his T-shirts. ‘Just . . . you know.’

‘Do you think your mother will want to come back here with you?’ said June, not looking at him as she pulled out a handful of underwear.

‘Here?’ Amit looked at her startled. ‘With me? You mean to live with us?’

‘Well, I mean she might want to. To just get away. Didn’t your friend Raj’s mother do that when his father died?’

Amit stared at her, and then at their kitchen, as if he could see his mother standing there right next to the toaster in her old red cardigan. Then he shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know. I never asked. I mean all the family is there. The house. What would she do here by herself?’

‘It was just a thought,’ June shrugged. ‘I was just wondering. I thought it was sort of the done thing. How many socks do you want to take?’

‘I don’t know,’ he scratched his head. ‘I guess you’re right. I guess I should bring her back with me. For a little while at least. It would take her mind off things.’

He left his packing half-finished and went online to research visas. He found it extremely comforting to read their bland bureaucratese, the steps neatly laid out one after another.

‘I need to take copies of my bank statements for the last six months,’ he told June as if he had found a solution to something. ‘They ask for that when you need to get a visa for a dependant.’

By the time Amit managed to change two flights and land in Calcutta, his father was just a framed picture on the nightstand. His cousin Rajeev had performed the last rites at the crematorium. As the only son it was Amit’s right, his responsibility, to light the pyre. But the plane had a nine-hour layover in Singapore. Romola couldn’t bear to keep the body overnight in the house on a block of sawdust-covered ice, melting slowly in the living room. And she shuddered at the thought of Avinash lying there like an unclaimed piece of luggage in the cold dark anonymity of a morgue. Rajeev offered to perform the rites, Romola had told Amit on the phone. Yes, agreed Amit, it was the practical thing to do.

Secretly, Amit was almost relieved. When his great-grandmother died, Amit remembered watching silently as they went about preparing her body for cremation. He remembered the relatives and neighbours crowded around the rooms. The piles of white flowers dripping little puddles of water everywhere. His father dressed in white cotton, his face unshaven. His mother telling him distractedly, ‘Did you get something to eat? Go next door and at least have some fruit.’ But Amit had shaken his head and clung to her sari, too afraid to let her out of his sight. He had stood at the door behind her when they finally left with the body. They had hoisted the flower-strewn body on their shoulders and set off down the street chanting ‘
Hari bol, Hari bol
.’ It scared Amit to think of how they had tied his great-grandmother down with strong twine as if she might try to get off her bier as they carried her down the street. He had stood on the porch and watched them walk down the street scattering puffed rice behind them, her body bobbing under the pile of wreaths.

‘Do you know what happens at the burning ghat?’ his cousin Rajeev, three years older and infinitely wiser in the ways of the world, had told him that night with ghoulish relish. ‘When you light the flames, you have to hit her skull with a stick and break it open so the soul can fly free.’

‘You lie,’ said Amit, terrified at the image of his father cracking open Great-Grandmother’s head. But the image had stuck with him over the years, imprinted somewhere deep inside him. He realized with a start as he packed his suitcase for India that he was past thirty and had never been inside a burning ghat. Sitting in America, he would hear about this uncle and that great-aunt passing. But he’d never been in India when it happened. This time too he was spared. He wondered if Rajeev remembered the story that had haunted him for years. He had no idea if it was true, if Rajeev had indeed cracked his father’s skull open.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped into the house in Calcutta was the quiet. His father had not been a boisterous man. Even when he was in the house you barely noticed him. He would sit in his armchair, the one whose stuffing was coming out of the side, reading a newspaper, a cup of tea slowly growing cold in front of him. But for the rustle of the paper and the occasional rasp of him clearing his throat, he made no noise at all. After a while he would get up, fold his newspaper neatly and say, ‘I am going for a walk’ and quietly leave the house, shutting the door gently behind him.

At one level it felt as if he had just gone for a walk. But as Amit put his suitcase down he could feel the difference. Something intangible had fled the house, wiped away as if with a wet rag, wiped so clean it was hard to tell what had been there in the first place. The house smelled of mourning – wet decaying flowers and heavy, cloying sandalwood incense. People had brought so many flowers that every old vase in the house had been pressed into service. Some stood in a cluster in front of the garlanded portrait of his father. It was an old picture from some official event and he looked somewhat severe in thick black-rimmed glasses and a tie, his moustache just turning grey. The flowers in the garland were already curling at the tips, turning brown.

It was twilight outside. For some reason only the fluorescent lights were on, and they made his mother’s skin seem bluish and sickly. She was wearing a white sari, her wrists looked bare without the red and white bangles she’d worn every single day since she got married. Unlike many of his aunts she had never worn a broad red streak of sindoor in her hair like a bloody gash of marital pride. She preferred just a discreet dab of it instead. Amit remembered, every day after her bath, she would sit in front of her dressing table, her wet hair cascading down her back. She would take her old silver comb and dip the end into her little container of sindoor and then very carefully touch it lightly to the parting in her hair, leaving only the slightest hint of red, as hesitant as a comma. Now even that tiny smudge was gone, leaving her scalp shockingly naked. He could see the white hairs fanning out from the parting in her head, bare as an untrodden path, as he folded his arms around her. She looked as if all the colour had been bleached out of her.

‘You’ve come?’ she said, her hand clutching the back of his jacket.

The tube light overhead flickered as erratic as the human heart. Blink. Blink. Blink. A sandy brown lizard clung to the wall, perfectly still, only its beady eyes moving as it watched the bugs circling around the light. We need to change the light, Amit thought to himself.

On the long uncomfortable flight from San Francisco, across the endless grey-blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean, he had been dreading this moment most of all, fearing Romola would collapse into a flood of hysterical tears as soon as she saw him and he would somehow come up short, unable to string together the correct words of solace. But instead they just held each other, somewhat awkwardly, as if acknowledging a new relationship between them which she masked by saying, as she always did, ‘How was your flight? You must be tired. Have you eaten?’

‘I’m all right,’ he said and stopped, afraid to say anything more, as if to ask her how she was might snap whatever was holding her together. Amit feared if that happened, he wouldn’t know how to prop her up again.

In the end it was only after he had taken off his shoes, washed his face, changed into a pair of his father’s old white pyjamas and been served a cup of tea, that Romola finally brought up the topic.

‘We did everything we could.’ Her hands folded on her lap, her voice quiet. ‘But there was nothing to be done.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Everyone came,’ she continued as if going through a shopping list. ‘Madhu Kaka and his wife. Your aunts from Jodhpur Park. The neighbours. Even Ivy-pishi who lives all the way out near the Dunlop Bridge. You should have seen the flowers the office sent. Huge wreaths.’

‘Yes.’ He tried to imagine the scene as if he could paint himself into it. ‘My office sent some flowers as well.’

‘And Rajeev. What would I have done without him? He really took charge, like a son.’

‘Yes,’ said Amit. In his head he could see Rajeev cracking his father’s skull wide open. He shuddered, trying to dislodge the image from his head.

When he saw Rajeev later that evening Amit didn’t know what to say. Rajeev and his mother came by with a shopping bag. Amit could see oranges and apples stuffed in it. ‘What is all this?’ protested Romola. ‘Why more fruit? You have done so much already.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Rajeev’s mother gestured to Rajeev to set the bag down. ‘It’s important to keep up your strength, Romola. And now Amit is here too.’

‘Sorry, old boy,’ Rajeev patted him on the back stiffly.

Amit smiled bleakly. ‘Ma said she didn’t know what she would have done without you.’

Should I thank him for burning my father? Did he really crack his skull? Probably not. Surely they don’t do that in the electric crematorium? But it must have all cost money. Should I ask him how much and offer to pay him back?

‘It was nothing,’ Rajeev’s smile made his moustache twitch. He had come from the office and his white shirt had sweat patches under his arms. He had put on weight since the last time they had met. At another time Amit would have teased him about his belly. But he felt it would be inappropriate now. Rajeev pulled out a big plastic bottle of Pepsi from the shopping bag with the air of a magician.

‘Here,’ he held out the bottle as if it was the scalp of a fox he had just hunted. ‘I know you America-returned types can’t drink our water any more.’

Amit started to say he only drank Diet Coke because everything else had too much real sugar but then stopped, fearing it would sound ungracious.

Instead he just said, ‘Sit’ gesturing towards the sofa. But Rajeev had already sat down.

Not there. That’s my father’s armchair.

They sat facing each other. Amit asked after Rajeev’s wife and how old their little one was. Rajeev did not ask about June. Amit had told Rajeev about her on his last visit but Rajeev had only asked two questions. ‘Is she American?’ and ‘Does your mother know?’ He had answered yes to both and they had moved on to other subjects. Now they lapsed into silence while Romola and Rajeev’s mother kept talking, their voices low, tinged with faint anxiety. Amit watched the lizard poke his head out from behind the fluorescent light.

I would give anything for some Diet Coke. A tall glass with ice at the bottom filled to the brim with fizzy Diet Coke. I wonder if we can get it at the store around the corner.

‘So have you thought about what to do with your mother?’ Rajeev said balancing a cup of tea on his knee. Romola, who had brought the tea, looked at Amit but said nothing.

‘Um, well I don’t know, I mean it’s up to her, um what she wants,’ stammered Amit.

‘Of course, she’ll go with him,’ said Rajeev’s mother authoritatively. ‘It will be a good change for her. And company for Amit too – he has no one to call his own in San Francisco.’

June. What about June? Why do we pretend she doesn’t exist?

But Rajeev’s mother was in full flow. ‘These are modern times, baba. No one is going to go and shave their heads and sit in Varanasi waiting to die, surviving on scraps of parched rice like crows and pigeons. I am sure Avinash would have wanted her to go with Amit.’

Amit said nothing but glanced at his mother.

‘That is for later,’ she said soothingly. ‘He’s just come. There is so much to do. We’ll worry about me later.’

‘The main thing,’ Rajeev’s voice sounded professorial, as if he was about to prove a theorem. ‘The main thing is to be practical these days. Don’t worry about what people will say.’

He’s really getting a belly. He should exercise more.

That night as Amit was brushing his teeth Romola came to the bathroom door and said, ‘Your old room is a real mess. We had been using it for storage. It’s full of dust and papers. We’ll have to sort through them and clean it all out.’

‘We’ll do it later,’ mumbled Amit, his mouth full of toothpaste.

‘Yes, yes, but what I meant is why don’t you just sleep in my room tonight? There is plenty of space in the bed.’

‘Your bedroom?’ Amit stopped in mid-brushstroke.

‘Yes, it feels so big and empty now that it’s just me. It keeps me awake at night sometimes,’ she replied.

But that’s your bed. That’s the only bed I remember you and Baba sleeping in ever since I was born. Didn’t you get the bed when you got married?

‘Remember when you were a little boy and slept between us at night? You used to be scared of the dark,’ Romola smiled. It was the first time he had seen her smile since he came back.

Amit slept in one corner of the bed, still in his father’s pyjamas, on his old pillow, covered with his childhood blanket embroidered with blue and green fishes. He curled himself into a ball with his back to his mother. He could hear her rustling as she got ready for bed. He knew the ritual by heart. First she would smear on the hand lotion that smelled of English lavender. Then the dabs of Nivea cream to moisturize her face. Then she would tie her hair into a tight plait with a piece of old black ribbon. Finally she would go to the bathroom and change from her sari into an old shapeless nightgown – this one printed with little blue star-shaped flowers. When she was back she would turn on the bedside lamp, put on her reading glasses and sit in her nightgown on the bed writing in her diary.