Imaginary Men (19 page)

“You're always saying long-distance relationships don't
work,” Kali says. “They can, if you want them to. You have to try.”

“Have you met his family?” Auntie asks.

Raja and I shake our heads at the same time.

“Oh, Vishnu! Then we'll revise your plans. Go to India—”

“I can't go again, Auntie. I've just been—”

“You must go,” Durga says.

“Yes, you must come.” Raja takes my hand. His fingers are warm and firm, sending a pulse of electricity through me. He turns to my family. “I've already invited Lina to visit my mother and me in our house in Puri. I'll pay for the journey.”

Auntie Kiki nods, her toothy smile confirming her approval.

“What do you say, Lina?” Raja takes my other hand and gazes into my eyes. My insides go watery again. Meet his mother? Visit his home in Puri?

“Another wild family adventure,” I say, glancing around at the cluster of relatives. “How can I refuse?”

A
untie Kiki and I are shopping on Kolkata's Jawaharlal Nehru Road, still known by its older name, Chowringhee Road. The sky must have grown tired of oppressing the city, for now it opens to welcome a cool autumn breeze. Clouds tumble overhead, and a slight drizzle dampens my skin.

We thread our way through a seething crowd of shoppers, past pavement vendors selling everything from water pistols to underwear, carpets to handicrafts. We finally reach New Market, a bustling commercial hub. Merchants sell caneware, silk saris, silver jewelry, incense, sculptures, and souvenirs.
Auntie chooses several saris and haggles with a vendor. “Lina, see? This red one will be perfect for your visit with Raja's ma,” she says.

“Red is a wedding color, Auntie. I'm not ready for that. I'm just meeting her, not—”

“I know how difficult it is for you to come to India.” She puts down the saris and moves on to the next booth. “The crowds bother you, the noise. You have few memories here. And you don't know how to bargain, nah? You buy everything at face value—”

“You're very perceptive, Auntie, but I'm okay.”

“You're not okay. I know this. Your past is not here. Listen, now. Hush.”

Across the road, a woman sings a sweet, lilting melody. “
Mendichya panavar man ajoon jhulatai ga
.”

“What does it mean?” I ask, watching the woman unroll tapestries on the sidewalk.

“My heart still meanders on the leaves of henna,” Auntie says.

I'll never know the ache of memory behind such words. And yet, I can't help but hope that I'll find some element of home in Puri.

“Welcome to our home by the sea.” Raja takes my hand. His fingers are firm and warm, and a thrill rushes through me at his touch. My hair is a mess again, and I'm covered in dust
and sweat and feeling slightly nauseated from the three-hour drive over winding, bumpy roads.

“This place is lovely.” I look up the marble steps toward a sprawling house with open archways and big windows, right at the edge of a white-sand beach on the Bay of Bengal. I smell the sea's wild saltiness. Raja, dressed in jeans and a casual shirt, helps me up the steps. He's the perfect gentleman.

At the top stands a sparrowlike woman in jeans and a sweater. Her silken gray hair hangs loose, moving in the breeze. She's beautiful, the weather of years settling comfortably into her features.

“Lina, this is my mother, Neelu Prasad.”

I'll topple backward down the steps and faint in the sand. “Your mother?”

“It's a pleasure to meet you.” She speaks in a steady, cultured voice, unassuming and soft.

She's holding out her hand. I take it—her fingers feel bony as bird claws, and cool. Perhaps it's age, or perhaps she has always been this delicate. Difficult to imagine that a man as big as Raja Prasad could be the son of such a small woman.

I let go of her hand and smile.

“Please, come in,” she says. “You must be hungry and thirsty after such a long journey.” She leads me into an open-air living room, sparsely furnished with modest couches and tables. Books line the massive shelves, and I have the urge to search the volumes, some of which look older than this
house. The faint smell of sandalwood incense comes from another room, and wind chimes play a soft melody in the distance.

We sit on the couches, and a silent servant breezes in, dressed in white. Mrs. Prasad expresses her wishes with a nod, and the servant disappears. A silent language has passed between them.

“Your house is lovely,” I say. “Thanks for having me.”

“We're delighted,” Neelu Prasad says as the servant brings tea. The China teapot and cups are wafer-thin, probably rare, the tray beneath made of intricately carved brass.

“Lina, please understand,” Neelu goes on. “Our home is your home. You're welcome to stay. You'll let us know if you need anything, won't you?”

“You're very kind.” I try to imagine what life would be like here in Puri, or in the Kolkata house or the cottage in Santiniketan. “How often do you come to Puri?”

“When Raja has time to bring me,” Neelu says. “His business is mainly in Kolkata.”

“Stone exporting, I know. But I don't know much else.” I glance at Raja, who leans back on the couch, his feet on the table. He's wearing
chappals
, Indian sandals. He's entirely at ease. An ache squeezes my heart. How I long to feel at home here, and yet the ocean breeze, the shouts of fishermen or vendors in the distance, the sunlight diffused by ocean spray, still feel foreign.

“What do you want to know?” Raja opens his hands toward me. “My business is called Granite Point. I have many associates who manage the details. We export, wholesale, and retail Indian marble, slate, and granite. We offer many designs and types of products—”

“
Acha
, Raja,” Neelu says. “Lina couldn't possibly be interested—”

“I'm fascinated.”

“Raja tells me you're quite accomplished in your field. Matchmaking is a difficult endeavor.”

I glance sidelong at Raja. He doesn't blink. “I—haven't been too good at it lately.”

“Raja says you're the best.”

“What about you? Raja says you're quite accomplished,” I say.

“Hah, I taught physics in college for several years, but I've recently retired. You live an independent life in San Francisco. How I should love to visit.”

“Then you should.” I want to tell her she can have my apartment, sleep in my bed, and I'll cook Indian food for her, even though my cooking sucks.

“I should love that.” She smiles warmly.

Then I see the kitten, now a big, furry cat, curled up on a settee in the corner. The cat Raja rescued.

I smile, and we talk for a long time, until the tea is cold and the pot nearly empty. I learn about Raja's mishaps as a
child, the time a cobra nearly bit him, the night he sleepwalked and nearly drowned in the sea. I learn of his first girlfriend, a British girl visiting from London with her nanny.

“I caught them kissing in the bathroom,” Mrs. Prasad says, and Raja's face reddens. I've never seen him blush.

As the sun dips toward the horizon, a red glow seeps across the sky.

“Go on for a walk,” Neelu says, getting up. “I'm off to find the cook.”

I stand, my legs stiff. My heartbeat picks up at the prospect of walking on the beach with Raja again. Will he drag me into the surf? He takes my hand and leads me down the marble steps to the beach. We walk barefoot next to the shoreline. After the crowds of Kolkata, the deserted stretch of white sand calms my nerves, and for a few moments I forget that this man still might choose the princess. A thick, salty breeze rolls in from the sea.

“You never told me how you got the scar on your cheek,” I say. “I've been picturing a battle or sword fight—”

Raja laughs. “You're a woman of imagination. In reality, the story is much more mundane. I was a child playing crocodile with Dev. We would jump from bed to bed to avoid the ‘crocodiles' lurking on the floor. I missed the mattress and hit my face on the bedpost instead. My mother was beside herself. The wound required six stitches.”

“I bet you didn't cry.” I grin at him.

“I bawled like a baby, despite my mother's attempts to comfort me.” He walks close, still holding my hand.

“She's not what I expected. I thought she'd be bossy and loud, like Auntie.”

“My mother doesn't push,” he says.

“She has an inner glow, a kind of peace.”

“So do you, at times.” Raja squeezes my fingers. “I wish you could feel at home here, Lina, but I see the ambivalence in your eyes. In this global world, people e-mail each other across great distances, and yet we're still light-years apart.”

“I can't help who I am, Raja. I grew up in the States. I watched
Sesame Street
and played with Lite Brite and SpiroTot. We didn't celebrate all the Indian festivals. We had Santa Claus and Thanksgiving and Christmas trees with ornaments.”

“I'd like to learn about Thanksgiving—what is it? You slaughter large chickens, is it?”

“Turkeys. I don't eat them, but many people do. Still, I like the holiday. It's one of the few days without traffic, when most of the stores are closed and people visit family and stuff their faces with food, and then everyone complains that they've gained too much weight and they go on whirlwind diets that don't work.”

“
Acha
—you know your country, as I know mine. My father ran Granite Point for several years. The business faltered, but now it's doing well. And the orphanages need me.
There's still much work to be done. I'm loath to leave my projects.”

“I'd never want you to leave your projects,” I say. “Your roots are here.”

“And so are yours.”

“My roots may be here, but my home is there.” I point west across the distance.

Sunset spreads over the sand, bathing Puri in a rose-tinted glow. If only we could remain here, suspended in twilight.

Raja stops and takes my face in his hands, forcing me to gaze up into his eyes. The unspoken words
Princess Sayantoni
hover between us. The princess understands Raja's culture. With her, he would never have to travel; never have to forsake his home.

How can this faint silver filament, the spectral thread reaching from my heart to his, ever bridge the continents between us?

I
'm sitting at my computer in a bedroom so big and desolate it could be a foreign country. Since I returned to San Francisco, the fog hasn't lifted. Morning mist slithers through the city, flicking its tongue into every corner, breathing through windows. In my sleep, the haze hypnotizes me, lulls me into complacency. Americans don't worry about frequent power cuts or whether leftovers will rot in the fridge. We don't thank the shower for producing clean water with the proper pressure. After two weeks in India,
I
do. I worship water. I immerse myself in bubble baths until my toes shrivel into prunes.

I'm writing Raja an e-mail to thank him for paying my way to India, for taking care of me in Puri. I extend my warmest gratitude to his mother. Her mild rice and
dahl
nourished me through illness. I hope the arthritis is better in her thumbs. I'll never again take opposable thumbs for granted.

When I threw up for two days, Raja held a cool compress to my forehead, brought me lime-flavored Electral, an electrolyte drink, to restore my strength. I still smell his spicy cologne, hear his comforting, steady voice. He read to me from the Ramayana, the epic story of Rama and his great love, Sita. When the ten-headed demon, Ravana, kidnapped Sita, Rama amassed an army to rescue her.

Now I understand what Raja's life means to him in India. Here, life is television.
Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order
. The flickering tube can all too easily suck us into its virtual world. I came home and I was startled by a sense of emptiness, although traffic chokes the highways. Even in the city, there's a sense of isolation. We don't understand population density the way Kolkatans understand it.

Here, there's room for everyone, and no resource will ever run out. That's what we think, anyway, and I wonder if we take too much for granted as we pop hairspray and DVDs into metal carts and stand in line at the checkout.

What struck me most, upon returning this time, was the layer of flesh between skin and bone, giving Americans the
appearance of smooth jointlessness. I remembered, with a sharp ache, the sinew and flat, lean muscle on every rickshaw-wallah, roadside vendor, and servant in India. What a demarcation between rich and poor.

The day Raja and I returned to Kolkata, we took an auto-rickshaw through the streets, and I had no idea where we were going. We stopped to witness a demonstration. Factory workers were on strike. They sat cross-legged in the dirt, chanting, waving their arms, but I couldn't understand the language. Silly me.

We moved on and presently arrived at the Save the Children orphanage. I didn't know Raja was funding the house renovations. My heart lifted when I smelled fresh paint in two of the rooms. My small donations to charities paled in comparison. What had I been doing with my life? The girls laughed, fresh in their clean dresses, some in white-and-blue uniforms. Anchala, a tribal girl, trotted up and took my hand. Her fingers were warm. She spoke broken English, asked about my Liz Claiborne jeans. I wanted to take them off and give them to her. She was missing a front tooth, and I thought, the tooth fairy won't leave a quarter under her pillow, so I gave her a quarter, and she just looked at it and smiled. The silver glinted in the sun. For her, the quarter was nature's artifact, like a shining rock one might find on the beach. She wasn't thinking of what she could buy—bubble gum or jellybeans. While Raja went inside to talk to the director,
Anchala and the girls and I played in the courtyard, surrounded by a crumbling red brick wall. The climbing clematis lent wildness to the garden, and I thought if I found a loose brick in the wall, I could open a door to a better world. I would transport the girls, and for those who'd been abandoned simply because they were girls, I would grant a new set of loving parents.