Riot (11 page)

“ ‘Gonzaga?' I practically yelled. ‘You never told me you'd applied to Gonzaga. I thought we were going to stay here, near the City.' And none of the colleges I'd applied to were anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. Well, it turned out that a Gonzaga talent scout had come around to one of the high school games, liked him in action, and arranged the scholarship. We'd gone to a movie that very evening, and he'd forgotten to tell me about the encounter. So I was completely stunned. ‘What about us?' I asked at last. And then I realized the question hadn't even crossed his simple mind, that basketball was what, at that point in his life, he lived for, and I was completely incidental. I had spent so much time in his arms, but I had no idea what was going on inside his head.”

She turned to me then, looking directly into my eyes. “He was the first boy who'd really kissed me, you know, kissed properly, not just pecked on the cheek after a date, and of course the first man I'd ever slept with. And in all the ten, eleven months we were together, he never once told me he loved me.”

“Because he didn't, Priscilla,” I said, pricked by jealousy. “He didn't love you.”

“He could have said the words,” she replied. “They've been said to me by so many guys who never meant them. But Darryl was too honest to mislead me. I'd merely misled myself.

“I turned to Mom after this, and she was there for me, you know? She was patient and loving and nonjudgmental, and she helped me get over the pain. And she said one thing I never forgot. She said my problem was that I saw things in people that they didn't see in themselves.

“But Darryl did one thing for me. He cured me of my father. He went off to Gonzaga, and I wept for a week, and when I stopped weeping I realized he'd freed me. From himself, but also from the distaste and the fear that the thought of sex had evoked in me since the time I saw my father with that — that whore. Through Darryl, I'd sort of become normal again. You know what I'm saying?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

“After Darryl, it was easier to be a normal, red-blooded American woman,” she said matter-of-factly. “I went out with a lot of guys in college, dated a couple of them quite seriously, even, but they just weren't right for me, you know? One of them, a guy from Boston, Winston Everett Holt III, even wanted to marry me. It was in my junior year of college; he was a senior. Win was a Boston Brahmin, very preppy, with that accent only people with his sort of breeding have, y'know, ‘cah pahk' and all that — no, of course you don't know, how could you know — anyway, he had it all, name, family, wealth, good looks, good connections, good prospects. This was what my mother wanted for me. And I turned him down.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn't love him. Or maybe I should say that I couldn't love him. He was too much like my father.”

“This father of yours has a lot to answer for,” I said, lightly, but it was not lightness I felt at her revelations. I was troubled, even hurt, strangely, even though intuitively I had known all along that her life must have been something like this, an American life. I tried to gloss over my own feelings, but they would not be contained, and I found myself blurting: “These guys you went out with, did you sleep with them?”

“Some of them,” she replied, and then she looked at me curiously, realizing that the question was not a casual one. “Oh Lucky, does it matter to you?”

“I don't know,” I said, only half untruthfully, because I really didn't know how much it did, though I could scarcely be oblivious to the emotions seething inside me.

“Lucky, I'm twenty-four,” she said, holding me by both shoulders. “You didn't expect me to be a virgin, did you?”

“No,” I replied honestly.

“When you made love to me, here, that first time after the sunset …”

“I wasn't thinking then,” I said defensively.

“Well, you must have been pretty glad I wasn't a virgin then, right?”

“Right,” I said in the same tone, but my cheerfulness was strained, unconvincing. “It's not important, Priscilla. Forget it.”

She looked at me quizzically, then nestled herself into my body, her head upon my chest. I was silent. “Can I ask you something?” she said at last.

“Of course.”

“Your wife. When you met her — was she a virgin?”

“Does the Pope's wife use birth control pills?” I asked in mock disbelief. “Are you kidding? An Indian woman in an arranged marriage? Of course she was a virgin. Forget sex, she hadn't kissed a boy, she hadn't even held hands with one. That's how it is in India. That's what's expected.”

“Expected?”

“Expected,” I asserted firmly. “If she wasn't a virgin, no one would have married her. No decent woman from a good family would be anything else.” I had surprised myself by my own vehemence.

She was very silent, very still, and I realized I'd hurt her by my choice of words. “I'm sorry, Priscilla. I didn't mean that the way it sounded.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Just that things are very different here, in India. I guess we're repressed, after centuries of Muslim rule followed by the bloody Victorians. And of course there's a lot of hypocrisy involved. But as Wilde would have said, is hypocrisy such a terrible thing? It's merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.” I tried to lighten my tone. “But sex simply isn't something that's acceptable or even widely available outside of marriage. There's still a great deal of store placed on honor here. Women don't sleep around. And if they did, no one would marry them.”

“And men?”

“What about them?”

“Were you a virgin when you had your precious arranged marriage?”

“Practically,” I said.

“What kind of an answer is that?”

“I hadn't had a girlfriend or anything like that. There were some guys in college who did, but they were a tiny minority, and I'm not even sure how many of their girlfriends actually slept with them. I mean, it wasn't easy — girls and boys weren't allowed into each other's hostels, no one in college could afford a hotel room, you couldn't even hold hands in public without stirring up trouble. But yes, I did lose my virginity the way many of my friends did. We all had the same normal urges as anyone in America, after all, but none of the same opportunities. So, one night, a group of us from college paid a visit to a brothel.”

“No,” Priscilla breathed, sitting up. “That's disgusting.”

“It's the time-honored way,” I replied. “Men have to learn what it's all about, and no decent girl will show them, and in the normal course you only meet decent girls. That's why red-light districts exist. A hundred rupees, I think it was, for a dark chunky woman with betel-stained teeth and too much powder on her face. It lasted two minutes: she never took off her blouse, just lifted a crumpled petticoat and let me in. I never went back.”

“I hope not,” she breathed.

“Oh, some of the fellows did, the ones who could find a hundred bucks from time to time. I couldn't, but I didn't want to. My curiosity was satisfied. And I was repelled.”

“So what did you do?”

“Do?”

“For sex, of course.”

I laughed. “My dear woman,” I said in my most Wildean voice, “have you never heard of the sin of Onan?”

She blushed then. This lovely woman, who had just told me so matter-of-factly of having experienced the touch-and-thrust of sex with God knows how many men, was blushing at the thought of my having given myself a helping hand.

“So you understand why, when my parents wanted to arrange my marriage, I didn't protest too much.” I smiled. “I was ready. Boy, was I ready!”

“Well, I hope you weren't disappointed,” she said, a bit cuttingly, returning her head to my chest.

“Actually, I was,” I said very quietly. “Geetha wasn't just a virgin, she was horrified by what I wanted to do to her. Her mother, it seems, had given her the most basic instruction in what to expect. She refused to disrobe completely — she thought the very idea was disgusting. She showed no desire for my body either. So yes, I guess you could say I was disappointed.”

Priscilla looked directly at me with those amazing eyes. “I'm sorry, Lucky,” she said softly “That couldn't have been easy for you to tell me.”

“It's okay.”

“I'll tell you something, too, that I haven't told anyone. There's one thing I've never done. In bed, I mean. I've never let anyone make love to me the way my father was doing it with that woman. From behind.”

I looked at her, and she looked back, unblinking, and I was overwhelmed by the desire to seize her in my arms, to turn her around, to do to her exactly what she'd said she'd never do. I touched her gently on the cheek.

“I understand, Priscilla,” I said.

 

from Randy Diggs's notebook

October 12, 1989

Muslim professor I'd met in Delhi, Mohammed Sarwar, came to see me here at the guest house. He said he was staying with relatives in Zalilgarh while doing historical research, and it would be more convenient if he came to me. Unusual for an Indian — they're always inviting you home. From which I surmise not just that this isn't his home, but that the people he's staying with are very poor. Or conservative. Or both? Mustn't ask.

Sarwar arrives, young, slim, moustache, thinning hair, while I'm sitting on the verandah with Rudyard Hart. There's my first surprise.

“Don't I know you?” asks Hart, his eyes narrowing. “I'm sure we've met before.”

“We have, Mr. Hart,” Sarwar replies, as he mounts the steps and shakes his hand. “Over ten years ago.”

“Ten years ... of course! I remember you now. You were — what did they call you? A student leader.” He pronounces the words with exaggerated care, as if they were a rare species of butterfly. Or an exotic disease.

“That's right.” Sarwar is unabashed.

“With the commie student union, if I remember right.”

“With one of the commie student unions, Mr. Hart. There are two at the university.”

“Only in India.” Hart is cheerful. “Communism is fading away everywhere else in the world, but in India it sustains two student unions.” He wags a finger at Sarwar. “And you were leading a demonstration outside my office.”

“Down with American imperialism,” Sarwar recites. “U.S. capitalist exploiter murdabad. Coke is a joke on India's poor.”

“I liked that one particularly. Coke is a joke. You must have had great fun making those up.”

“Not really. We took ourselves very seriously.”

“Of course you did. I invited you into my office to discuss your demands.”

“That's right.”

“And,” Hart adds with satisfaction, “I offered you Coke.”

“Which I declined.”

“Which, as I recall, you accepted. And drank two.”

“No, that wasn't me. I refused. I was from the SFI. It was the girl who was with me, from the AISF. Her father was an extremely rich landlord from Calcutta, a member of Parliament for the Communist Party of India. She had grown up on the stuff. She told me later that it wasn't thirst that led her to accept; drinking your Coke was a way of exploiting the exploiter. She was extremely good at rationalizing the indefensible.”

Hart laughs. “What's she doing now?”

“Oh, she's teaching at an American university, Emory I believe. Lecturing on postmodernism and feminism. I'm told she has a green card, a tenure-track post, and the best music system on campus. She still contributes articles to the ‘Economic and Political Weekly' here critiquing India's dangerous compromises with the forces of global capital.”

“And you? Are you still leading demonstrations outside American imperialist institutions?”

“No.” It is Sarwar's turn to laugh. “I gave that up a while ago. I'm a professor now.”

“A professor? In what subject?”

“A reader, actually, in the Department of History at Delhi University. What you'd call an associate professor.”

“History,” Hart murmurs. “You have a lot of that in this country.”

“Yes,” Sarwar agrees. “Unlike yours. When I was at college I wanted to take an optional course in American history. The head of the department dissuaded me. Americans, he said, have no history. We, of course, have both history and mythology. Sometimes we can't tell the difference.”

“What sort of history do you teach?”

“I'm specializing in what we call Mediaeval Indian History. Also called by some the Muslim Period. The time when most of India was ruled by various Muslim dynasties, ending with the Mughals.”

“An odd choice, for a communist.”

“Oh, I gave that up a while ago too. It was a faith, really, and I soon discovered two other faiths that I realized meant more to me.” “And what were those?” Hart asks.

“Democracy,” Sarwar replies quietly “And Islam.”

“Sounds like a perfect segue,” I chip in. “This long-delayed reunion is marvelous, Rudyard, but do you think I could proceed with my interview with Professor Sarwar now?”

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

April 5, 1989

…

“How can you love me?” he asked me suddenly. “When you know nothing about my background — my parents, my village, my ancestral home, where I went to school, what I grew up eating, thinking, listening to, dreaming of?”

“But that's the whole point, Lucky,” I replied. “I don't care about your background. I don't care whether you lived in a thatched hut with no running water or grew up in a mansion. I don't care if your parents drove a Mercedes or brushed their teeth with twigs. I love
you
. Not your family, not your village, not your caste, not your
background
. I love you. And that's all that matters to me.”