Triptych (20 page)

“Finish your shopping, dear,” says the woman from the herb cart. She comes over and pats Kalp’s arm affectionately. “Go on. Don’t take nothin’ old Rudy says seriously. He’s always off on ‘those Pakies’ and the ‘dirty blacks,’ huh! As if he weren’t the boy of immigrants himself. Go on now — there’s a new girl opened down the end of the row I think you’ll fancy.”

“Thank you,” Kalp says, and he can see that Basil’s breathing has evened out. Kalp is relieved. Basil’s heart has been pattering too fast and it is making Kalp anxious.

This time, Kalp takes the initiative and tugs on Gwen’s hand. His other hand has the now-crushed herb packet. Kalp leads them to the cart at the end of the row, and Basil follows. Before he is within five feet of the cart, Kalp knows what it holds. He stops at its lip, staring down at the assortment of produce with wide, burning eyes.

It is all food from his world.

Some of it is smaller and tougher looking. Some of the fruits are a bit misshapen, some are not vibrant enough, but some are bigger and brighter and fatter than Kalp has ever seen them grow. The woman — barely an adult, Kalp thinks — grins hugely at him.

“Was ’opin you’d come my way,” she says. “See anythin’ familiar?”

Kalp is overjoyed!

“Where did you acquire the seeds?”

“One o’ yer people was a botanist — snatched thousands of ‘em from her labs. She’s working with my Pa. Got us the best hothouse in the county.”

Kalp’s eyes burn anew to hear that so much flora has survived.

Kalp wants one of everything. He wants all of it! But Gwen has only meted out a small amount of tender, enough to buy the required ingredients for one meal. He points out what he’d like, squeezing and sniffing and grinning back at the vendor. For every one he purchases, she gives two for free. He is as flattered by her generosity as he ever has been with any human’s.

Basil keeps up a steady stream of inquiries, asking what that is, and this, and what does it taste like, and how is it prepared, and can you eat it raw, and can he try one of these right now? Kalp selects the ripest of a small red fruit his people call the
osap
and the vendor washes it with her bottled water and Basil goes into raptures eating it on the spot. Gwen demands a bite, and is equally as pleased.

The vendor is happy, because now other shoppers are crowding around. Where the strangeness of foods from other worlds at first kept them away, now they are drawn by Kalp’s ability to explain what it is and how everything is used, by the novelty of the experience, and by Basil’s ringing endorsements.

Soon the vendor is too busy dropping produce into cloth bags and collecting tender to converse with them, but Kalp is happy to have helped her become prosperous. This is an excellent way to pay her back for her generosity. Kalp, Gwen, and Basil turn to go, and the vendor stops them with a shout:

“Oi!” she says. “You stop by after closin’ next Friday, mebe, we’ll talk. Mebe I’ll take you up to Pa’s farm, eh? You can give ‘im tips?”

Kalp bobs his head in the affirmative. He would very much like to see the farm. Kalp is no grower of plants, no cultivator of land, but he has been on farms on his own planet as a child and would like to compare.

Their last stop is at a vendor’s cart laden with animal carcasses. Kalp’s front teeth are sharp, an evolutionary throwback from carnivore ancestors, and he is eager to peruse the wares. He cannot find exactly what he is looking for, but settles on something called “venison,” which he hopes tastes close enough.

All the way back to the car, Basil keeps trying to dip his hands into the sack filled with produce to snatch another
osap
, and Kalp gamely keeps the purchases elevated far above Basil’s sneaking arms. Kalp’s reach greatly exceeds Basil’s.

Kalp tries out his first laugh, and it seems to be well received.

***

They pack the few leftovers that the dinner meal produces into more plastic containers. These go into a cloth sack, and Basil adds a small loaf of crusty bread, some plastic bottles of juice, and a plastic bag of Gwen’s brownies.

Basil calls it a “picnic lunch” for tomorrow’s trip to London. After dinner, Basil must adjourn to the office space in his bedroom to complete tasks that must be finished for Monday, and Kalp stands beside Gwen at the sink and carefully dries the dishes and utensils and drinking vessels that she hands him. He learns the lay of the kitchen in putting them away, where each object goes, what is in the cabinets and under the stove and above the refrigerator.

Kalp feels that the meal was not his best attempt, but he is proud of the results considering his limitations. Basil’s distended tummy and the soft smile on Gwen’s face seem to underscore this achievement.

Gwen is still staring at the dissipating soap bubbles in the grey water when she speaks. She has been opening and shutting her mouth, drawing breath and sighing for the past ten minutes. Kalp is guessing that she has something important that she wants to say and is working up towards vocalizing it. He remains quiet and waits.

Finally she says, “How do you feel about what happened today?”

Kalp is not completely surprised by this inquiry. He carefully arranges the drying towel on its rack on the handle of the stove and formulates his answer. “You and Basil were far more upset than I.”

“What that man said and did was inexcusable,” Gwen says, and she is weary from her own anger. “And unfortunately, common. For such a bloody enlightened race of people we’re still a big group of back-stabbing bigots.”

“Not you and Basil.”

“No,” Gwen allows, and takes her bottom lip between her teeth, biting lightly. Kalp is uncertain about the significance of this gesture, but finds it strangely endearing.

“Then I am unconcerned,” Kalp says, pulling his attention back to the conversation. “Would he have attacked me physically?”

“Probably not,” Gwen says. “Men like that are all hot air.”

The idiom is unfamiliar, but Kalp supposes he understands the meaning all the same. “Are there any who would seek to harm me?”

“Of course there are!” Gwen says. She still does not turn around. “Fuckers with baseball bats and tasers…did you know there was a riot last week in Dallas?”

This is not new information — Kalp has been warned that there are those on Earth who are not pleased with his people’s presence. Then again, they are also displeased with the presence of other humans whose skin or moral or spiritual or sexual values do not match their own, so Kalp supposes there is no pleasing everyone. Even among his own people there used to be dissent between the citizens of the different continents. That dissent has fizzled in the wake of the disaster, and they have become one race rather than different nationalities. He hopes Earth’s nationalities will follow suit soon enough, without the impetus of a similarly horrifying tragedy.

“I am capable of defending myself,” Kalp says. He chooses not to click his nails or bare his teeth to indicate so. He is sure Gwen is more than adequately aware of them. “In the mean time, I will not fear walking in the open street. Some people are unpleasant. But most are not. I enjoyed the child in the park today.”

Gwen is staring at her water-shrivelled fingertips.

He reaches out and touches the back of Gwen’s neck, a possessive, caring gesture that he has seen Basil perform. It is very intimate, according to the pornography book, and Kalp’s fingers tremble as he does it.

Gwen jerks out from under his touch, startled.

“I’m sorry,” Kalp says softly. His fingers are hot.

Gwen reaches up, rubs the back of her neck. Her eyes are wide and her pupils open. Her mouth is wet. Kalp wants to try to kiss her, but he fears that this is an inopportune time.

Instead, he turns to the stove and puts on the kettle. Basil lost the wager to produce a tea Kalp found palatable, but Kalp needs something for his hands to do, to distract his mind, and he feels it would be a caring gesture to bring Basil some of the soothing beverage right now.

Gwen walks out of the room without saying anything.

When the kettle whistles, indicating that the water is boiled, Kalp pours out one tea and adds milk, one instant coffee, black, and pours the remainder of the water over a sprig of herbs that he had kept separate from dinner for that very purpose. Basil will be disappointed to learn that Kalp does indeed enjoy tea, just not Earth tea.

He delivers each cup quietly — one to Basil’s desk, one to Gwen in the courtyard garden, and he returns to the kitchen with his own.

Carefully, he sets to work separating the seeds he had saved from the fruits and vegetables into plastic bags. He uses a fragrant black writing utensil to label them. He plans to purchase potting soil and little tin buckets, like the herb garden in the neighbour’s courtyard, to grow his own
osap
and
shric
and tomatoes.

***

The stress of yesterday and the discomfort of the incident in the kitchen seem forgotten in the bustle of trying to get out the door the next morning. Kalp feels wonderful — his nest is perfect and the ache in his back has vanished. He is conscious first, so he boils the kettle and starts the coffee maker gurgling, and then goes back upstairs to clean himself and change out of his pyjamas. While he is walking past Gwen and Basil’s door, he hears Basil saying “wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Gwen mutters, the sound muffled by the pillow Kalp imagines her face to be mashed into.

“Oh no,” Basil says in response to her, “if I let you sleep until the alarm goes off you’ll be a grouch all day. Up. Kalp’s already used up all the hot water.”

Kalp would be alarmed at his own rudeness for depleting the supply, if he did not already know that this is one of Basil’s favourite phrases for teasing.

He also understands now what Gwen meant by “shopping.” When he opens his chest of drawers, Kalp realizes that he owns no civilian attire. The only clothing Kalp owns is meant for work, so in the end, he is wearing a pair of Basil’s blue jeans. They are far too short in the leg and Gwen says they look like clam-diggers. It takes Basil’s explanation around a mouthful of eggs at breakfast to understand what Gwen means. Kalp is also wearing one of Basil’s seemingly endless supply of tee-shirts with intentionally humourous phrases printed across the chest. This one says
Obey Gravity! It’s the Law!

Basil wanted to put him in a tee-shirt that had one arrow pointing at his face with the label
The Man
, and another pointing towards where his genitalia would be were he human and the label
The Legend
. Gwen had looked at Kalp in it, giggled, and vetoed it.

“Besides,” she had added as Basil herded Kalp back up the stairs to change again, “the arrow isn’t even pointing to the right place!”

Basil had turned pale and pushed him back into the bedroom.

Kalp cannot help the little thrill of joy at the memory. Gwen, at least, has studied enough of his kind’s anatomy to know where all the pertinent parts are; perhaps, like him, she has also read pornography for the sake of study.

Kalp is consuming a pot of kiwi yogurt — he is unsure that he likes the taste of the grainy green fruit and is glad that they did not buy any at the market yesterday — and watching Gwen pack, unpack, repack, and reunpack a vinyl shoulder bag. “Hat, keys, sunglasses, chapstick, sunblock, oh, Basil, hand out,” she says. Basil does not stop shovelling food. He merely switches his fork to his other hand and holds up his free palm obligingly. Gwen squirts some of the oily cream into it, and he rubs it all over his face as he’s chewing.

Kalp loses his appetite for the similarly-textured yogurt.

He abandons it on the table and fetches an apple instead, crunching through the red skin to the soft white flesh below, trying to keep the juices out of his chin fur. Kalp is not even finished eating the apple before he is hastily ushered out the door to the car. They drive to the train station. It takes forty minutes, during which Gwen slathers herself with the sunblock cream and tries to remember if she locked the front door (she did, Kalp watched her do it), and fusses about counting out enough tender to pay for train tickets.

Kalp will receive his first pay packet next Friday. He feels guilty for being unable to contribute to the excursion — Units share — but Gwen assures him that he can pay next time, and that puts his conscience at ease. By the time Basil has parked the car, Kalp has consumed the entirety of the apple (“what, core and all?” Gwen notes, aghast) and has to duck to enter the train station. It is an old building and its ceilings are low. Generations ago, Basil explains, humans used to be shorter.

They buy three tickets and the station master is unsure whether to laugh or scream at Kalp’s stooped countenance. Kalp does not let the man’s discomfort affect him, and soon they are back out in the open air of the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. Kalp has also never been on a train before. He wonders what life will be like when he’s run out of things to do for the first time, and hopes that the day when that occurs is far, far off.

There is a family with two little boys who look even more difficult to tell apart than usual — “twins,” Basil calls them, a litter of two — beside them on the platform. At first the boys are terrified of Kalp, and Kalp, who hovers very high above them, does not blame them. He crouches low to the ground to remove some of his looming impressiveness, and says, “This is my first excursion on a locomotive.”

The mere mention of a train is enough to get both boys, who are each clutching small plastic models of a blue steam engine with a smiling face on the front, excited.

“What, never?” one asks, and then both are off, chattering so excitedly about this rail line and that engine, that their fear of Kalp vanishes entirely. Kalp cannot understand all that they say — their accents differ again from Basil’s and Gwen’s, and they speak far too rapidly, but the enthusiasm is infectious and Kalp finds that he does not care.

Kalp thinks that if all children react to him as favourably as the ones he’s met thus far, men like Rudy will eventually become obsolete as people outgrow their bigotry. It is a comforting notion.