The Vine of Desire (40 page)

what I said when I regained a bit of control

Friends don’t keep secrets from each other. So are you ready to tell me why you left home?

what you said

Don’t keep using that word! Haven’t you realized yet that I’m homeless. That I’ve never had a home, only delusions of belonging which the world was quick to squish. And about secrets: they’re what make friendships possible. If you knew everything about me, you wouldn’t want to be my friend. But there
are
some things that friends don’t do. One of them is, they don’t pressure each other.

(A lamp hanging over our table threw a small shining over your face. Everything else was dim, only your face rising out of that fog of gray, the ordinary, dreary world. And your face glowed like a live coal, like a fire flower—are these clichés, too?—you glowed with your misfortune. I looked into my life and saw that it was merely a mechanical ticking. Even when I saved a life—or failed to save one—there was no meaning in it, because there was no heart. Instead, in my chest, a pendulum swung back and forth, going nowhere and so …)

I said

All right. (And when you slipped past my next inquiry, why you left your cousin, whom you obviously loved so much), all right. (And to whatever you asked me to do after that), all right, all right. (You raised my hand to your grateful cheek, it was cool and
moist like a shell lifted from seawater, though I could not see any tears. No, the flesh of your face was soft and ripe as fruit, so sweet that it seemed to have nothing to do with sorrow, yours or mine. I thought of all the things I would never tell you now, I thought of blood, the woman they brought in last night to Emergency with a knife gash as long as her arm across her chest and stomach. I think she was Indian, but I had no way of finding out. She had no ID, only toenails painted the color of tropical birds. How the breath sounds when it’s drawn into a torn lung. Sometimes in dreams I hear it. Once another woman came in with a broken jaw, she was holding it in place with her hand, when she could talk she said, I fell, I fell. I closed my eyes to hold in this one moment of brightness, my fingers on your cheek, each soft, separate downy hair, the faint, deceptive smell of lotus dust, all I would ever get [possibility: 100 percent] from you. I kept my eyes shut because your words were like a gate closing.)

and you said

Thank you.

Nine

The inside of the Los Angeles International Airport is like a speeded-up filmstrip. Seasoned travelers hurry ahead, jackets folded over their arms, pulling carry-on bags behind them like well-trained pets. They glance at their watches, adjust their dark glasses, pick up a bottle of Evian or a
USA Today
, and sidestep a roadblock of eager Hare Krishnas without missing a beat. Stressed families with children strapped into strollers stutter to a stop by the flight-information monitors, matching the gate numbers on their tickets, then rush at the line snaking out of the McDonald’s. Bumping into strangers, they mumble an absent-minded apology. Only the children in their strollers, thumbs in mouths, have the leisure to observe everything.

There’s a certain magic in airports. Loci of arrivals and departures, they make the air crackle and surge. Worries circle overhead in airports like disoriented birds. Possibilities also. In airports, the horizon is always golden—but eminently reachable. In a minute you might be pulled up into it, released of
gravity. One can take on a new body here, shrug off old identities.

What of those who are left behind, who must get into their cars with only the talk-show host on the radio for company, who must pick out the parking ticket from the messy glove compartment of their lives, and pay for it?

Here’s a stranger a lot of people are bumping into because he has the disconcerting habit of stopping unexpectedly in the middle of a crowded walkway. He isn’t looking at anything, monitor or lighted sign or pointed arrow. He seems to know exactly where he’s going, even though it’s his first time at LAX. It’s just that he’s distracted, from time to time, by the enormity of his contemplations. It’s Sunil, who left Houston this morning before daybreak, who has lost a good amount of weight. This makes him appear taller, older, more distinguished. A touch of gray at his temples gives him a new air of thoughtfulness. He’s wearing his best suit, but under its elegance, his shoulders slump with disinterest, as though he’s remembered that there’s no one left in India to whom he has to prove his success. His eyes flick quickly through the crowd, do not rest for long on anything but the children. Correction: the girls. Older, he whispers to himself. Younger by two months. He is comparing their ages to Dayita. From time to time, he slips his hand into his coat pocket. Inside is a miniature tape recorder, complete with extra batteries. Sunil touches it lingeringly, the way an alcoholic might finger a bottle.
Not yet, not yet.
He’s been speaking into it much too often recently. It’s becoming a weakness, a new dependency, the last thing he needs in his life just when he’s peeling off the rinds of old attachments. He must focus, instead, on what he has to do to make himself happy. But what is that? All
this time he thought he knew, but nowadays certainty keeps shimmering away from him like a mirage. Dull as old coffee, his eyes indicate a betrayal. Something had been promised him, some incredible adventure, if only he left the numbing mundaneness of his days with Anju. Where did it vanish?

Passports checked, ticket stubs taken. It is the year of exiles returning home: Arafat to Gaza, Solzhenitsyn to Russia, and Sunil to a childhood he thinks of as an unhealed wound. He gives his seatmate a curt nod and leans into the window seat. He pulls a blanket over himself and instructs the stewardess that he is not to be wakened for meals. He has not taken off his jacket. The tape recorder presses against his hip, solid as a weapon. In his other pocket, earphones. Later, he will rewind the tape and listen to himself, trying to understand what he hears.
Even when I’m airborne, kid, I feel gravity’s hooks in me.
Safety announcements, now. In the unlikely event of oxygen shortage, says a cheerful voice, masks will be made available. For improved safety, you must put on your own mask before assisting someone else with theirs. Sunil frowns his disbelief. Sometimes—he knows this from experience—there’s only enough time to save one life.

Four hundred and fifty-three miles north, Anju wakes heavily, in the old house she shares with three women, with the sense that something unpleasant looms ahead. Ah, she remembers it now, today she has to pack up Sunil’s—what do they call them?—personal effects. She wanders with groggy steps into the bathroom, which is crowded with wet towels, various articles of underwear hung up to dry, an overgrown wandering Jew that trails its furry purple leaves over a wicker shelf, a stack of
Mother Jones
that is in imminent danger of toppling over, and
sundry toiletries whose labels proclaim they were never tested on animals. She turns on the shower and washes angrily in water that cannot seem to make up its mind to grow hot. Why hadn’t she just called the apartment manager and asked her to do it? She doesn’t owe that man one red cent. So why did she decide to put herself through this useless, masochistic exercise? She glowers at herself in the foggy mirror as she pulls on her oldest pair of jeans, a fraying work shirt. She’ll throw them away after she gets back from the apartment, the way one does with contaminated things.

Fifty-six miles to the northeast, the postman rings the bell, hands Sudha a package too large to fit in the mailbox. When she sees the writing, she has to sit down, her knees feel so weak. Anju, she whispers.
Anju
, as though it is a prayer. But, inside, there are only things from other people. She recognizes Ashok’s handwriting, her mother’s dramatic slashes and loops. She doesn’t know the writing on the largest envelope. She tears it apart, and a tape falls with a clatter to the wooden floor.
For Dayita
, says the label. She stares at these objects, wanting to deny their claims on her. Maybe she could just throw them into the garbage compactor? But finally she gathers them up, her movements rigid in their economy. For a little while she made herself new under a new roof, among people innocent of her history. But the past has the habit of catching up with you, even in Berkeley. Now she must deal with it.

Seven thousand eight hundred twenty-three miles to the southeast, another airport. Cacophony of coolies, blurred announcements
over the loudspeaker in Bengali. A man extends his passport to be stamped. The officer looks at the name.

“Going for a nice tourist visit, Ashokbabu?” he asks familiarly, leaning forward, giving the man a knowing wink. “Where do you plan to stay during your trip?” People are leaving the country all the time on visitor’s visas, never coming back. Not that he cares. It’s good riddance, as far as he’s concerned. Let the American government deal with the illegals. Still, he likes to hassle them a bit, maybe make a few extra rupees along the way. But this man stares back at him, arms crossed.

“Yes,” he says with polite self-possession. “I think it’ll be a very nice visit. I’ll be staying with friends. Their address is filled out on the form already.” He holds the passport officer’s eye until the man shifts from one foot to the other. “Watch out you don’t get disappointed—or worse,” he says spitefully as he stamps the passport. “I hear San Francisco is full of AIDS and earthquakes.”