Red Earth and Pouring Rain (29 page)

“Yes,” she says.

So I pick up a movie at random from my side of the aisle and hand it to her, and say, “Here, try this.”

She takes it and looks even more uncomfortable, and the guy, who is handsome, I have to admit, who I haven’t ever seen before,
is starting to
suss out that some weird vibrations are clanging about his head, and I can see he’s trying to decide whether he should be
bitterly funny or violently hostile, so I say, “Have fun. See you later.”

Ling and I stroll off through the check-out gate and when we’re outside in the mall she turns to me.

“Did you see what you gave her?” she says.

“No.”

“The old
King Kong
.”

We both start laughing even though it isn’t that good, but we crack up and get caught by it until we start staggering from
side to side, disrupting traffic and so on, and the security guys start to loom toward us, so we sit on a circular bench and
hold our stomachs. I stop before she does, and I sit and watch her unhook her glasses from behind her ears and carefully wipe
her eyes with a folded white handkerchief. All around us there is the glint of glass, polished stone, anonymous hordes of
teenagers, concrete, I can feel a cold draft on the back of my neck. I see very clearly the thickness of her hair, the wideness
of her cheekbones and the small nose, the fold at her eyes. I ask: “Ling, how do you deal with all this shit?”

She shrugs, looking, without her glasses, more gentle than I have ever seen her. “Draw water, cut wood.”

I have fallen in love again, after that, not once but more than once. I have, but now I’ve also learned the necessity of rakish
irony. I cradle breasts in my hand, and tip them to my lips, but I do it with a certain dashing expertise. I’ve learned that
what we know, and what we tell each other, and what we think we must believe doesn’t make one damn bit of difference to anything.
So I forgive people, or perhaps I pardon myself. When I hear, “Attempted Robbery at Kroger’s,” I forgive. I read, “Father
Kills Son and then Self,” I shudder and forgive. I forgive “Mother of Three in Death Pact, Councilman on Embezzlement Charges.”
When they, all of us, move in inadvertent weekend caravans across the country, wagon-training to there to get away from here,
I forgive, when they roar past me in their Transam with its firebird on the hood, tires tearing the road, eyes fixed eternally
on the horizon.

When I awoke, the Jaguar was squeezed between a pick-up truck and a large black motorcycle, in front of a low white building.
I pulled
myself out of the car and leaned against it, trying to work my muscles out of their night-long cramp. Tom was sitting on a
low wall that ran round the parking lot, his knees drawn up, pulling on a cigarette.

“Oy, Majnoon,” I called.

He turned toward me, the smoking hand in front of his face. “What the fuck?”

“Majnoon,” I said, feeling embarrassed. The building hid us in deep shadow, but I could feel the heat from the sunlight a
few feet away. “Majnoon. He was a Great Lover. Literally means ‘mad.’”

“What the fuck?” But behind the hand he was smiling a little now.

Amanda came toward us, shielding her eyes. “Come on,” she said.

I slammed a door on the Jaguar and we fell in behind her. In her right hand she held a wallet and in her left two keys on
huge brass tags. Tom raised an eyebrow at me. The motel was laid in two half-circles, with a ragged lawn in between. We walked
across the grass, and then Amanda stopped in front of a door marked “8” and tossed a key at Tom.

“See you later,” she said to Tom, taking my hand.

“Bye, Majnoon,” I said. He smiled.

Amanda and I walked down the row to nine. Inside, I went into the shower first, came out in a towel and lay on the bed, waiting
for Amanda. By the time she slipped in beside me, close, her back against my chest and hair wet on my face, I had already
gone in and out of a dream. She took my hand and pulled it around, laying it on her chest, over her heart, and held it there.
We lay like that for a time and then we were asleep.

I awoke out of another dream, of what I do not remember, and we were already making love. I tugged off her T-shirt and she
reached down and found me, then guided me into her, we moved frantically against each other, her nails in my shoulder and
small exhalations at my ear. When we finished I rolled over and she moved with me, her knees still tight and hurting against
my sides, we lay like that for a long time, and then like a knot coming apart we relaxed against each other. Still, there
was a pulse in my chest that beat and raced painfully, and I looked about the room in the darkness, trying to remember where
I was. We kissed now slowly and I rubbed her back, moving the muscles gently
under my fingers, and she said, “Oh, that feels good.” Finally we slept again and I didn’t dream.

In the morning I sat outside on the steps, drinking Coke out of a red can. The sky turned colors over the buildings, and far
down the street a lone woman in red, yellow hair, tottered over the sidewalks in high heels. Coming home, I thought, going
home.

now

WE HAD A CHILDBIRTH
during the story-telling last night. It is said that a woman, not even a listener, but a hugely-overdue passer-by on her
way home from the hospital, paused to listen to the distant echo from the other end of the maidan, which at that distance
was comprehensible only in part, and felt suddenly the twinging onset of labour. She was taken back to the hospital, where
she gave birth to healthy triplets, three girls. Of course this woman’s name is not known, nor the name of the hospital she
was taken to, but everybody has an uncle who knows somebody who knows the family. Now the whole town is said to be ringing
with this news, and tomorrow we are expecting expecting mothers from all over the district, and soon our maidan will be filled
to overflowing with fecundity.

Meanwhile I have seen translations being sold, or rather re-tellings of our stories in other languages, written by hand and
copied on cheap coloured paper by indigent clerks and retired bureaucrats. This money-making scheme bothers me not at all,
but Abhay seemed to be a little upset by the extrapolations and additions that these re-tellers have sprinkled throughout
the text, and he muttered darkly about copyright laws.

‘There are whole new stories in here,’ he said. ‘It’s not even our story anymore, what these fellows are peddling.’

‘It ceased to be yours the minute you wrote it,’ I suggested, and earned a glare for my trouble. We were watching the crowd
come in, bigger than before, and I thought, is this profusion a burden or gift? This size?

Ashok came in through the door, bringing a stack of newspapers. ‘We’re in all the local papers,’ he said. ‘And I hear the
police are concerned. It’s a gathering without permission.’

‘Spontaneous expression of inventiveness,’ Abhay said. ‘Surely there’s no law against that.’

‘Surely there is,’ Ashok said.

‘Quiet,’ Yama said. ‘It’s time.’

AS SIKANDER GREW UP
, his father, whose name was Hercules, applied himself secretly to the task of saving the natives of Hindustan from the eternal
damnation that he knew was their fate, his efforts manifesting themselves mainly as succour, hospitality and aid to the missionaries
who passed through Barrackpore, disguised as Calcutta traders or scholars. The Company, wary of the unrest that was believed
would result from proselytizing, of the disruption of profit-making activity that would result from offence to native sentiment,
had banned all missionaries from Hindustan, and so Sikander, Chotta and Sanjay, intent on their games of hide-and-seek, often
bumped into thin, pale, men who gave off a sour smell consisting equally of anger and pride as they fingered a strange idol
consisting of a bleeding man nailed to two pieces of wood arranged crosswise. Sometimes, seeing the boys scampering about
the house, one of Hercules’ guests would bark exasperatedly at them in an incomprehensible tongue, and then the children would
run to the safety of the garden across the wall, to the refuge of Ram Mohan’s domain, where he would seat them around an old
couch and relate some familiar story featuring comedic demons, poor Brahmins, and selfless, gentle heroes; sometimes, Chotta
and Sikander’s mother would appear over the wall, climbing through a well-worn depression in the stone. Although Hercules
was barely cordial to Sanjay’s
father in court, and scarcely bothered to hide his contempt for Indian poets in general, he allowed his wife and sons this
one contact with natives, as long as it was kept strictly unofficial, and was conducted only through the back gardens, over
the wall.

So Sikander’s mother would come, and take over the story-telling, and then, invariably, the tales became more robust, full
of Rajput warriors exhibiting casual, towering bravery and matter-of-course chivalry. She and Ram Mohan alternated tales,
smiling at each other: first, ‘Once there was a poor Brahmin student who fell in love with a beautiful princess… ,” and then,
‘Once Rana Sanga, of the eighty-eight wounds, captured a Moghul noblewoman…’; in the late afternoon, Sanjay’s father would
appear, hot and sweaty, trailed by his mother, and they would seat Sanjay between them while the father recited a racy ballad
composed for the Raja, ‘There was once a courtesan of Lucknow / Who saw a soldier stringing his bow…’

But once, once when Sanjay was old enough for his parents to be thinking about his upnayana, when his head reached his father’s
navel, once Chotta and he scrambled through Hercules’ house, hiding from Sikander; they crawled along the side of a balcony,
listening for the occasional sounds of their pursuer’s feet, hearing, instead, a voice in the distance, speaking in the familiar
but mostly unintelligible language of the firangis, yet managing to convey, in its frequent descent into distorted yawl and
its sheer volume, an impression of the most intense anger and disgust. Sanjay listened carefully, understanding nothing. Every
morning, Sikander and Chotta disappeared for an hour and a half, into the front half of the house, for what they referred
to as ‘Angrezi with Hercules’ —their father seated them on two identical stools and drilled them in the strange sounds and
usages of his native tongue. They both seemed to regard these daily encounters with their father as one of the unpleasant
but unavoidable trials of life, and much to Sanjay’s chagrin, refused to discuss their lessons, much less pass on their knowledge
of English, saying, we had enough of that this morning.

Sanjay sat up, to listen better, and the voice went on: ‘The people of India do not require our aid to furnish them with a
rule for their conduct, or a standard for their property. Indian theology has as elevated a conception of God as in Christianity,
and equally lofty ethical conceptions.’ Chotta pulled frantically at his arm —from the room beside the
balcony, there was the unmistakable, almost imperceptible padding (except to Chotta, who had the ears and all the senses of
an alert animal) of stealthy feet, careful, deliberate. Sanjay looked around frantically, but the only door out of the balcony
led straight into the arms of the stalker, and it seemed that their fate must be capture and disgrace, but suddenly Chotta
scrambled behind Sanjay, scrambling, and in the next moment he dropped over the railing of the balcony, onto the narrow ledge
outside. Sanjay followed, swinging a leg over the railing, and then he stopped, looking down at the drop, the stone cold between
his legs, rough between his buttocks, his limbs powerless; Chotta pulled at his toe, and he took a deep breath and moved out
onto the ledge, crawling on all fours behind Chotta along the narrow shelf of stone, moving towards the voice, which had now
ascended into a higher register, propelled by rage: ‘Any account of India’s high civilization, and of the wonderful progress
of its inhabitants in elegant arts and useful science must have some influence upon the behaviour of Europeans towards that
people. We must realize that if civilization were ever to become an article of trade between the two countries, it is England
which would greatly benefit by the import cargo’; Chotta and Sanjay rounded a corner, and now the speaker became visible:
a tall man in a black coat, red-haired, teeth curiously narrow and protruding, white and freckled skin, now mottled with blood-dark
splotches, struggling for breath, holding in his left hand a sheaf of yellow paper.