Oleander Girl (28 page)

The plumber’s news is as bad as Sarojini feared: large segments of pipe—not just the broken one—have corroded and will have to be replaced. Several walls in the house will have to be opened up to allow this. The job will take weeks and cost thousands of rupees, money she does not have.

After the plumber does a few makeshift repairs and leaves, Sarojini sits down heavily on the bed, the edge of her sari trailing in the ankle-deep water. She sits there for a long time, and then she goes to the drawer where she usually throws miscellaneous items she doesn’t know what to do with. Cook comes by to ask how she is expected to cook lunch, now that the water is turned off, but Sarojini barely hears her. Her muscles ache with tension as she rummages through the debris of years. She knows she put the card in here, the card belonging to that man, what was his name, the one who came by, asking to buy the house? All she can
remember is how much she had disliked him. Finally, frustrated to tears, she upends the drawer, scattering items all over the floor. There it is, the card with its glaring-red logo. She dials the number with a hand that shakes as though she had suddenly developed palsy.

“Mr. Vikas Saxena, please.”

“He is not in, madam,” a secretary intones. “May I take a message?”

“It’s Mrs. Roy from twenty-six Tarak Prasad Roy Road, the old house that he wanted to buy and tear down. I’m ready to discuss his offer. But I need to talk to someone right away. Isn’t there anyone in the office?”

“I will check, madam,” the girl says, her voice bored. “Please hold.”

Sarojini holds—what choice does she have?—for an interminable period. Then, just when she is convinced that the girl has forgotten about her, a man comes on the line.

“This is Mrs. Roy, calling from twenty-six Tarak Prasad Roy Road,” she starts again, but the man interrupts her.

“Sarojini-ma, namaskar to you.”

He speaks in Bengali, his accent thick but comprehensible. And familiar. Sarojini knows that voice from a long time ago.

“Sardarji?” she whispers. “Is it you? Are you here in Kolkata?”

“Yes, ma.”

“But Bimal-babu told me that you had retired and gone back to your native place!”

“I did go back to Ludhiana for some time, but I missed Kolkata—I’d lived here so long. So I came back, and now I’m one of Saxena’s overseers.”

Sarojini braces herself and says, “Babu—passed away suddenly.” Talking about her loss still hurts.

“I heard that from Saxena. I am so sorry. I wanted to call you, but I had promised Babu. That’s why I hesitated, even today—”

“Promised Babu what?”

“That I would stay away from the family.”

“Why would he want you to do that?” Sarojini asks, confused. “You were the best driver we ever had.”

“Babu wanted to make sure no one found out—especially you. Of
course, I wouldn’t have said a word, but he thought that this way there was no chance of a slip.”

“Found out what?” Sarojini’s body grows hot, then ice-cold. Not another secret, just when she thought she was finally done with them! “Tell me now. Whatever it was, I deserve to know it.”

Sardarji doesn’t protest. Perhaps he agrees. “Soon after you went to the village, Korobi-baby’s father came to Kolkata. He started asking a lot of uncomfortable questions, about how Anu-missybaba died, and what happened to Baby. But Bimal-babu was ready for him. He gave him a fake certificate, stating Baby had also died in childbirth. He had it forged and stamped with court stamps, so that it would look official enough to fool Baby’s father. Babu hoped that then he would go back to America, and you folks could keep Baby. He had to pay a lot of people to keep their mouths shut—the forgers, the nurses in the infant-care ward, who knows how many others. He paid all of us servants handsomely, too—though we would never have said anything to that foreigner. None of us wanted you to have to give up Baby, who was the only family you had left.”

“Oh,” says Sarojini. It is a sound that one might make if punched in the stomach. Sardarji’s words bring back the ache of those days, of losing Anu, of being terrified that she would lose the tiny, premature baby, too. But there’s another kind of pain she feels. The reason for so many things that she attributed to Bimal’s idiosyncrasy is becoming clear to her. Why she was so hurriedly sent to the village with the baby. Why she was made to stay there so long. Why most of the servants—including Sardarji—were gone by the time she returned. Why Bimal cut himself off from their social circle. Why he left so little money behind when he died.

Still she cannot believe it completely. Still she must ask.

“Korobi’s father came all the way to Kolkata?”

“Oh, yes, ma. Just after you went to the village. Babu must have known he was coming because he’d already commissioned the forgers to create the fake certificate. I drove him to pick it up, and then I drove him to a big hotel. He had two certificates with him, and an urn of ashes.”

Whose ashes could they have been? Sarojini wonders distractedly. Not Anu’s—those had already been offered into Ganga Sagar by then.

“He gave it all to Baby’s father.”

A sudden hope spikes in Sarojini’s chest. Here, perhaps, was some of the information Korobi so desperately needed. “Did you see—him? Did you hear anything they said?”

“No. Babu was very careful, a true lawyer.” There’s admiration in Sardarji’s tone. “But when he got out of the hotel and into the car, he was really upset. He was cursing Baby’s father, using gutter language, words I didn’t even think he knew. That shocked me. As you know, babu despised people who couldn’t control their mouths. At one point he covered his face with his hands and cried out, ‘O Goddess, why this, on top of everything I’ve had to suffer? Of all the people in America, why should she have chosen him?’ Then he remembered me and didn’t say any more. Privacy and dignity were always most important to Bimal-babu.”

“Was he angry because they’d had an argument?”

“I don’t know. I think it must have been something worse, because Babu was upset the entire way home. Whatever it was, he kept tabs on the man until he left India—hired a detective, even. He was like a crazy man those days, Bimal-babu, snapping at everyone, not sleeping, spending money like water. I was worried he would have a heart attack. Anu-missy’s death had already taken a toll on him. Only after that man got on the plane did Babu breathe easily.

“It all paid off, though, in the end. Babu never heard from Baby’s father again, and Baby grew up safe with you.”

Sarojini doesn’t trust herself to speak. She is overcome by shock and rage and a deep sorrow that Bimal had kept all this from her. That he had so little trust.

“How is Baby now?” Sardarji says. “I would like to come and see her one of these days, if I may. And is it true that you are thinking of selling the house? If so, I can make sure Saxena gives you a fair deal.”

Sarojini must have made the right responses—though she can’t remember what they were—because Sardarji sets up a date to come over with a preliminary contract and says his good-byes. After she hangs up, she sits with her head in her hands, unconsciously mimicking her husband from that fateful day long ago. Her mind moves in slow, fitful circles,
like the grinding stone they used in her parents’ home to make lentil paste. Why had Bimal been so upset with Korobi’s father? What could have been so wrong with the man her daughter had loved to her death?

Three days have passed since I returned from Boston, three days of misery and silence. Rajat hasn’t called, and though I long to hear his voice, I’ve vowed not to phone him. I’m afraid that if I do so, I’ll capitulate and tell him I love him. And I do. But I refuse to be treated as someone who can’t be trusted. He needs to admit the unfairness of his accusation, otherwise it’ll set a harmful pattern for our married life. I can’t let that happen.

Things at Desai’s have been gloomy. No one at the university has given us any leads. No one has answered the newspaper ads, which are cutting deeper each week into my finances. At this rate, my money is going to run out long before it’s time for me to return to India. Even Desai’s losing hope; I can see it in his face.

To add to my problems, matters have escalated at Mitra’s apartment. Since I’ve been back from Boston, each night I hear them arguing in their bedroom. Once Seema shouted, “Send me home! Send me home so I can have my baby in peace away from you!” When I’m there, she follows me around, mournful as an abandoned kitten. I sense that she wants to tell me something, but I force myself not to ask. I can’t afford to enmesh myself in Seema’s difficulties while my own life is in such disarray. As it is, Mitra, who hasn’t spoken to me since our telephone altercation, glares at me when we run into each other as though their marital discord is my fault.

In this dark time, Vic is my only brightness. Something shifted between us that night at the motel. Driving back from Boston, as I slumped dejected in a corner of the car, he told me about his life. He was planning to leave New York—that was what he and Desai had been arguing about the day I met them. His restaurant, which had been doing so well even a year ago, was on the verge of bankruptcy because people no longer wanted to eat at a place named Lazeez. The unfairness of it had hit him hard, particularly because he’d always loved this city and felt proud
of its cosmopolitanness. His failure made him belligerent and difficult to be around, and his girlfriend had broken up with him. The only thing keeping him in New York now was his reluctance to abandon his uncle, who had been swamped with work since 9/11, as people looked for loved ones who were lost.

“I’m glad I waited, though. Otherwise I wouldn’t have met you.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I looked out of the window, embarrassed and pleased. Perhaps Vic didn’t mean anything special because he went on, casually, to other topics. His college roommate had opened a nightclub in the San Francisco area and was doing well. He’d asked if Vic would like to come to work with him. What did I think of the idea?

I felt strangely betrayed at the thought of Vic’s leaving New York, but I couldn’t say that. It was illogical. Wouldn’t I be going back to India myself in about two weeks? Still, a sigh escaped me.

“Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world if you don’t find your father. You made it all these years without him, didn’t you?”

I wanted Vic to understand my longing. I considered telling him about my mother’s intimate note, interrupted by death. The dream vision in which she yearned for me to meet the man she loved. But he had moved on to a more disconcerting issue.

“As for your troubles with Rajat, maybe this separation is a good thing. It’s giving you both a chance to put things in perspective. It’s better than rushing into marriage and regretting it later.”

Vic’s life trajectory seemed so simple, so American, fueled only by his own desires. How could I explain to him all the obligations that fettered me because I was the granddaughter of Bimal Roy, barrister, of 26 Tarak Prasad Roy Road? Because—like my mother—I had made certain promises?

“Remember last night on the road? We could have been in a really bad accident. But we came out okay, didn’t we? Things have a way of working out. So stop worrying and give me one of those fabulous smiles.”

I let him cajole me into laughter, to persuade me that I was lucky. The “fabulous” bit helped. But underneath I was thinking of his kiss. It had been a human gesture of comfort, no more. Immediately afterward, he had escorted me to my new room and left. Why couldn’t I forget it, then?
What ironic coincidence had made Vic kiss me on the same spot on my forehead that Rajat’s lips had touched? Everything was confusing me. Had I made a mistake by agreeing to marry Rajat, as Vic implied? Or was I on the verge of making a bigger mistake?

Today when I enter the office, Desai slides a thick file across his desk at me with a grin. He has located two Robs who live in Northern California who might be contenders. One is an estate lawyer in San Francisco, the other a writer in the Santa Cruz hills. Both had gone to Berkeley at the same time as my mother and might have taken some of the same courses, in political science or communication. They were both members of an international-student club that she, too, may have joined. He hadn’t found any specific information about girlfriends.

“It’s a long shot. Want to give it a try?”

How can I not? It feels like my last opportunity.

We formulate plans. I would call the lawyer and set up an initial appointment, pretending that I needed legal advice about some money I was about to inherit. To the writer, who was known to be reclusive, I would send an e-mail stating I needed to hire an editor for help with a family memoir I was writing. Once we met and finished the business discussion, I would go for honesty—partial honesty, at least. I’d explain that I was searching for people who had known my dead mother.

“You’ll have to play it by ear,” Desai advises, “depending on what they say. Even if neither of them is your father, maybe they can give you other leads.”

Neither of us mentions my return ticket, hanging over my head, just two weeks away now.

More plans: Vic will fly to California with me, rent a car, and drive me around. Desai has a relative who owns a modest motel. He’s arranged with her to give us a discounted weekly rate. He adds up the costs: airfare, motel room, the car rental, inconvenient incidentals such as food and gas. Vic’s room and fee. But even though Desai has budgeted strictly, the total is significantly higher than the amount I have left.