THE IMMIGRANT (38 page)

Nina couldn’t bring herself to say this act of wisdom was involuntary.

The monsoon came, the academic year began, Nina visited Miranda House. She timed her visit for the twenty minute coffee break. Her ex-colleagues clustered around her, gave her tea, asked about her life in Canada. They wanted to hear all about it, she must tell them everything, everything. Library Science? What was that?

She describes it—her courses, her fieldwork, her trip to Ottawa, the lab work, the Friday get-togethers. She can hear the glamour she is giving a course that really has none and she feels sorry for her erstwhile colleagues. Sorry that they believe her, sorry that they think she has gone to a better life. She will never tell them how she misses the world of ideas. Despite the discomfort of poor teaching facilities and the pain of stupid students, she had known the excitement of breaking into minds. That is entirely missing in her new life.

When she finally finishes with her account of life in the West, she is introduced to unfamiliar faces. The new recruits look pleasant, blank and uninterested. They do not care that it is her absence that has given one of them a job.

The bell rang, the coffee break was over. The teachers disappeared with their registers under their arms, that badge of belonging. And Nina had to accept the fact that she was now an outsider.

It wasn’t the institution she missed, it was the community. What had she been searching for ever since she left but community? At the La Leche League, the HRL, the consciousness raising group, the Killam. She strove to find a place into which she fit easily but every way she turned, she scraped against jagged edges.

As the day approached for Nina’s departure, Mrs Singh vociferously assured Nina that her mother was very lonely. ‘How she waits for your phone calls, talking of you all the time, all the time. You must take her back with you. What is there for her here?’

Nina, tightlipped, said yes, Mrs Singh, instead of yes, aunty. She knew her formality would offend.

‘Stupid bitch,’ stormed Nina later. ‘She can’t resist interfering.’

‘I hope you weren’t rude to her. She has a good heart. Who else do I have to ask about me?’

‘Why don’t you come and live with me, Ma? I am your only child,’ said Nina thinking if only her mother would agree to immigrate to Canada, her life would assume the simple sweetness she yearned for.

‘We’ll see, beta. You have just married. You need to be alone with your husband.’

This silenced Nina. God knew what her mother would think if she came, how many dark corners her piercing maternal gaze would uncover. Let her own life get sorted out, then she would call her, then insist, then finally give her the comfort she deserved. After her life got sorted out.

July end. Sitting on the plane, back to Canada.

This was the trip that was supposed to give her peace, clarity and wisdom, but two months later peace, clarity and wisdom are still playing hide and seek. The corners in which they hide have multiplied, and Nina is angry and upset about this.

To fly angry and upset is to prolong an already long journey. Nina as usual does herself no favours. Her head feels dull, and when the air hostess arrives with the drink trolley, she takes a beer. At the sight of the golden froth in the plastic glass and the little packet of roasted almonds, she decides once again that one should only live for the moment, as advised by the Bhagavad Gita. It is clearly useless trying to do anything else.

viii

Back in Canada. Back to Ananda, back to jet lag, back to silence and isolation. Two months, that’s all it had taken, two months to forget the solitude that ran through her days when she was not working or studying. If Zenobia could only see her as she roamed, distressed, from room to room, no one to talk to, alone and lonely, she might understand a little better.

Back to cleaning, shopping, borrowing books from the library. Back to walking the streets, gazing at the maple trees and admiring their beauty. Back to eating chips, Cheetos, brownies, and drinking root beer. Back to waiting. Waiting for Ananda to come home. Waiting for term to start.

In the evenings Nina asked Ananda about his day, his patients, Gary and Sue. Ananda was full of conversation—he must have missed talking when I wasn’t here, poor man, mused Nina. Everybody needs someone, and fate has joined us together.

‘It’s strange being so alone here, after India,’ she remarked.

‘At least you don’t have a thousand people poking their noses in your business.’

‘It’s a small price to pay.’

He grunted. She looked at him. Who was he? At times so distant, at times so attentive. Their marriage was in the bright flat colours of a child’s painting.

His obvious pleasure upon her return contributed to her guilt. She had transgressed, her discontent was her fault. From now on she would devote herself to him, but in this endeavour she experienced a barrier impossible to cross.

Laughing to show she was not serious she asked, ‘Well, did you have an affair while I was away?’

His lips pursed, his eyebrows drew together. What made her say that?

Nothing. She just wondered. He seemed different. To herself, she thought, how could a man look blank and tense at the same time?

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

Ananda should have known how to forestall his wife’s suspicions, especially since he had missed her. His emptiness during her absence brought home to him how comfortable he had grown with his Indian counterpart by his side. Maybe he could only have sex with white women once his older self was housed, safe and secure. Did his uncle ever feel totally at ease with Nancy? For seven years Ananda had yearned for a Canadian wife, but his body had made its preferences clear and he had followed its dictates.

Fortunately that body was now comfortable with a larger playing field. He had experimented while Nina was away; it would have been foolish not to make use of the time he had paid so dearly for. In jeans and an open shirt, an old silk scarf tied around his neck, he had made his way to the bars near the quay. The first girl was blonde, he liked the look of her slender white legs as she sat perched on a high stool. They reminded him of the long ago Kim. He looked at her, she smiled and suggested he buy her a drink. It was easy, so easy. He was a traveller passing by, he said, on his way to India. India was always exotic enough to create interest and make sure that there was no future.

After this fling he had told himself, enough. He had proved himself beyond a doubt. True, he had lasted only ten minutes, but he had compensated by doing it twice in the night. The girl had seemed satisfied. She had moaned and arched, he had done some of the things Mandy had taught him. Then a few weeks later, again the yearning for this kind of adventure.

In bars, he was anonymous, he could experience the thrill of being anybody. Why stick to the familiar? The second time he claimed he was Egyptian, Omar Sharif.

‘Isn’t that the name of an actor?’ the girl had asked.

‘My parents named me after him.’

‘My name is simple. Patricia.’

‘A lovely name. So Patricia, what are you doing tonight?’

Patricia looked at him. He looked different, sexy and intense at the same time. She knew what he was after, and she knew it wouldn’t be repeated. He was leaving for Cairo the next day. But, might be fun with an Egyptian man.

It was.

Ananda did want to bring excitement into his marriage, but too many potential sources of conflict bogged him down. For one thing Nina had reverted to her earlier obsession about children. Going to India had influenced her in this direction, he accused.

‘I can be pregnant and still study. There is someone in my class who has just had a baby. She said being a student meant her time was more flexible.’

‘Well, I think we should wait till you finish. That is what we had decided. It’s not a game, you know.’

But still she talked of motherhood, continuity, infertility treatments and her biological clock. His wife was conservative after all, in different ways he kept coming to that conclusion. He was the true Westerner, she the true Indian.

Did she know how much these things cost, he asked irritably, trying to shut her up.

Yes, she did. They cost but not that much. If he wanted, she would pay him back when she started earning.

At this he got really angry. Their fight lasted three days, the coldness another week.

The many faces of Ananda did not amount to a man Nina comprehended. It was obvious from the joy with which he greeted her at the airport that he had missed her. And then he had insisted on making love as soon as she put her foot inside the apartment, never mind her fatigue, the day and night journey, the jet lag. Just a quick one, he pleaded, just a quick one, I missed you so much.

She found this passion reassuring. I’m going to try really hard from now on; this marriage is the main thing in my life, she vowed as the quick one got over.

‘Let’s start again,’ she murmured.

‘Yes, let’s.’

‘Two months was a long time.’ Now she felt it, who hadn’t felt it before.

‘Too long.’

‘Well, you were the one who bought the ticket.’

‘I didn’t know how much I would miss you.’

‘You didn’t, huh?’

‘I love you, baby.’

‘Thank you, dearest.’

‘Welcome home.’

Come September she was definitely going to ignore Anton. In the arms of his wife at night, and behind the desk at the New York Public Library in the day—between these two poles there was no room for anybody else. He had never said there was, but she didn’t have to agree to such terms. She wanted permanence and after her degree, she would do all it took to conceive. Her mother was right, this was the West, anything was possible.

In her mid thirties she felt insecure about a future with no children. Her profession was being taken care of, but on the home front she needed more than Ananda. In India husbands were not expected to meet one’s entire needs. Here it was all man—woman—relationship—love—fulfilment, screaming at her till she wanted to give up the ghost. The anchor she was forging out of the iron mined from the virgin soil of Canada needed a broader base on which to rest.

The passion Ananda had exhibited on her arrival soon waned, leaving her empty and dissatisfied. His crimes loomed large. He wouldn’t address himself properly to the issue of their children, he kept calling her baby, which she hated, he had taken to wearing a ridiculous silk scarf around his neck when they went out. Did he think he was a gay lothario rather than a middle class immigrant from small town India?

Above all her feeling of isolation was creeping back. It was borne on her that she was living with a man who never understood a word she was saying. He exhibited concern for practical things. Cooking, housework, car rides, tickets home, all taken care of, but who was the wife he worried about? Nina didn’t think she had ever known the woman, though she would have given her right arm to be her.

The first day at the Killam. Nina spent some hours imagining the ways in which she was going to ignore Anton.

But she was destined to be thwarted. No greying head turned out to be his, no matter how piercingly she gazed at it from a distance. Seven days passed in this manner, with the desire to ignore him now raised to fevered proportions. Perhaps he had decided to drop out—how would she ever know? She grew tense thinking of this possibility.

When he finally returned, Nina heard, eavesdropping on the explanation he gave the teacher, that his wife had sprained her ankle; there was no way he could have come earlier.

His wife again. Was there no end to his concern? Nina left the classroom, turning left to avoid him at the elevators.

Anton’s priorities were clear. Staying away or seeking him, both were fraught with emotional intensity. She would be natural, friendly, only interacting with him as a colleague.

The beginning of October, Nina’s third autumn in Canada. It is the afternoon break on Wednesday—the day associated in Nina’s mind with extramarital sex, and a day on which she had to struggle even more with the sadness in her nature.

‘Hey Neen.’ It was Anton. He was running to catch up.

She stopped.

‘Long time since we talked.’

‘I thought this was the way you wanted it.’ Moodily she kicked the few leaves her feet could find on the pavement.

He was too intelligent not to know what she was saying. His wife had been sick and he had been distracted—nothing to do with her. And now, he went on, would she like to come to his room? He had missed her.

Her traitor heart stood still at the prospect of simple, joyful sex with a man who understood what she said the minute she said it.

All of her longed to say yes, to forget, to go.

But he had been too silent. She was not to him what he was to her.

‘I think it better we don’t see each other in that way.’

He might argue, try and convince her; she would have to be firm. She steeled herself to resist.

She was not tested. ‘See you then,’ he said and loped off.

The following months she hurt more than she had bargained for. She sat alone in the deep purple armchairs ranged against the big glass windows overlooking the courtyard, pretending to study while thinking about her life. Even though she could see that Anton had been using her, she grieved over him. Humiliated by her own longing, she wondered why she was such a sucker.

No satisfactory answer was forthcoming. She only knew she missed the black room, the intense well-being she felt after love making. But he didn’t care for her, so it was impossible to continue.

Her pain warned her never to try an affair again. To bargain away her peace of mind for an ephemeral satisfaction made no sense. And when the man was married, it meant he always had an excuse for not committing. Her own marriage did not protect her, while his protected him—one way street from start to finish. Initially it had seemed an adventurous thing to enter into, but once the exhilaration wore off, all the tawdriness lay revealed, along with the heartbreak.

Once or twice, from the corner of her eye, she saw Anton’s footsteps slow down as he approached the purple armchair but she forced herself to ignore them.