We Are Not in Pakistan (26 page)

Did Camille feel like Moira? Buried before she was dead?

“Fanny — I mean Fay — women didn't think of married life as being buried in those days. And they didn't think of complaining. Heck, if you're any indication, women still don't complain.”

Fay held up a hand. “Gino, I've been down some very wrong roads, busted my ass for two husbands.” The smoke haze grew to a thick screen. “You never know where you'll end up. I mean, you set off on a path that's all laid out for you, soon as you're born, and along comes a day when you veer off, and pretty soon you have no explanation for any of it.”

Her heavy-lidded eyes were bright, defiant. “You can only think about where you changed. You could go on regretting all the roads you didn't take and never do yourself a bit of good.”

She snuffed out the cigarette and sat back in the sofa. Had anything he said brought her closer to harmony with Jon — or Jon's spirit?

Only a little coffee remained; Gino put his mug back on the tray.

“I don't know if it's in writing,” he said, “but we always talked about my being Jon's music executor. He was working on an authoritative edition of his music when …”

“And you'll complete it for him, won't you. Be Constanza to his Mozart, Romain Rolland to his Beethoven.”

“Of course. It'll take a bit of judgement. Well, guesswork.
Jon tended to play his music slightly differently each time — like Chopin or Liszt, you know.”

“It will take imagination. A muscle we could all exercise sometimes.”

“Editing, more like.”

“And what will you learn from it?”

“Me?”

“Yes. Will it tell you more about my father? Will you gain some new insight?”

“It may help future musicians play his music as Jon intended.”

“Oh yes, I can see it now — debates over authenticity. How do you know what anyone intended, Gino? You can't escape our time and return to when he began performing and composing. When was that — the sixties? Will you try and recall what he intended? Even if you were there, Gino, it's impossible.”

“Yes, it will be a speculative business, but it's important.”

“And you think you'll find some over-arching pattern to help you understand my father?”

“No. I don't think the music is a guide to the man. But the man guided us to hear the music.”

“And that was the purpose of his life?”

“Yes.”

“What about his other decisions — to marry, to have children, to ignore them and his grandchildren?”

“Incidental,” he said, before he could stop himself.

She turned away.

What a cruel SOB I am.

“I mean, the music doesn't reflect his actions or attitudes. Listen.”

Gino set his mug on the table and rose. Though he could have done it remotely, he went to the CD player, turned up the volume and pressed repeat. “Nocturne” played again, softly.

He allowed it to course through him for a while, watching Fay,
hoping for magic. “It sounds wonderful on CD. Some of Jon's early recordings should be reissued on CD.”

“And you'll select which ones? You'll decide which of his works will be rearranged, which can be heard in elevators and airports?”

She crossed one leg over the other, digging her heel into the carpet.

“Well, someone has to make his work accessible. Do you want to do it?”

“You want him back, you do it, Gino. Who else would be interested — a few academics, maybe? I'm sure Earl will give his permission too, though he might strike a hard bargain on royalties.”

Gino turned up the volume. “Listen. What do you hear?”

She uncrossed her legs, leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped beneath her chin, and closed her eyes as if making a superhuman effort.

“Pride … violence … anger … grandiosity … arrogance. And you?”

“All that, yes, and intelligence. Wait … now here's a suppleness, a breezy elegance.” He closed his eyes and let the music take him into the next movement.

After a while he said, “I hear such a sinuous gentleness. Do you?”

“No.”

“I wish you could.”

“Well, Gino, you tell the world that's what they oughta hear.” Crockery clattered into the music as Fay cleared empty mugs, the cream and sugar, the smell of ashes. “Next week, after the gathering of the clan, I'm outta here. Though I doubt anyone in my family wants to see me. I may have to call an escort service — they go anywhere with anyone, don't they? Do they go to family gatherings?”

A huge earthy laugh.

Some little girls get so warped along the way. So broken they can't be expected to sing pure as they once did. Maybe we are all like notes — some louder, some softer. With fleeting links, contrasting, each becoming the cause of another.

“I better be going.” Gino took up his tuning case and made for the French window, pushed it open and stood on the stone terrace overlooking Jon's garden.

Those purple petunias — a self-branching variety called Madness — were drooping. And if he hadn't talked to Fay, Gino might have, no, he would have busied himself here with the sprinkler.

But Camille was waiting, as always. Suddenly Gino needed to be with her, hear her voice.

“I'll be back again, I promise.” Fay leaned out to the terrace and placed her small hand in Gino's.

But will I be here next time you sweep in?

“And I'll make Earl send you all Dad's music — every scrap we find.”

A latch clicked; the French window had locked behind him.

Fourth of July weekend e-mail: two rejections from academic journals, requests for revisions from another, four student assignments, seven Viagra solicitations, three days' worth of newsfeeds from the
New York Times,
the
Los Angeles Times,
the CBC.

A translation of Windows commands into Punjabi. Minni and Gagan will laugh when they read that. They're asleep right now. Karan forwards it — Santa Barbara to New Delhi in seconds.

Google Alerts on the Guantánamo Bay prisoners. Sikh Coalition Bulletin: another Sikh man beaten up in New Jersey. Weekly digest from
The Onion.
And — a message from someone with an all-too-familiar last name. It's highlighted in Karan's inbox. His cursor floats over it.

Click.

Campus sounds outside his office blend into background. He rubs the back of his hand across his throat; it comes away damp.

This one didn't take seconds — it's been years in coming. Like the plate shift that sent a sixty-foot tsunami racing outwards from Indonesia to swallow a hundred and fifty thousand people. Now of all times, when suspicious looks at his turban and bearded brown face are becoming less frequent.

He pulls a deep breath into his lungs, slowly releases.

He should move the message to trash. He can't send it to trash. Two teams tug a rope that passes through his chest.

He shouldn't even think of replying. Could be entrapment: remember “special registration” that turned out to be a roundup? Twenty-four hundred men were deported. And remember the OSHA industrial safety meeting that turned out to be a Homeland Security roundup of illegal Latinos?

Sticky air hangs over his shoulders. He flicks on the table fan.

He expands the message to full screen and scrolls with tingling fingertips. He sends it to print. When it materializes, he carries it to the window. Reads it again.

Hi. Are you the Karanbir Singh who married Rita
Ginther on Jan 7, 1980? I'm her daughter. And
yours. I'm 23. Born in August 1982 after you guys
split. Mom kept tabs on you from Madison to
Montreal, Amsterdam, St. Louis and now Santa
Barbara. All I know is that you teach economics
at the university and come from India. Mom said
I should look you up if anything ever happened
to her. In case you care, she died three months
ago. Kidney failure. Am leaving tomorrow for
Los Angeles. So I googled you. Found a Wiki
entry about you too. Will be spending the July
Fourth weekend with my friend Ashley. Plan to
visit till Friday. I could come see you the week-
end after that.

Some mistake here. He doesn't have a daughter. That marriage — a transaction, for god's sake. Just a transaction. Rita was the capitalist selling Resident Alienhood, and he was buying because
he panicked — well, he
was
paying almost double as an international student, was ineligible for student loans and still had a thesis to complete and defend. All she had to do was make it last two years till his INS interview. She had loans to pay, needed the money. And it was cheaper to live together.

Consenting adults.

Oh, what had he consented to? Making love with Rita was like sinking into heavy cream — but hadn't he told her: no complications? She had assured him — the Pill, the foolproof Pill.

There was no daughter. No child, full stop.

Then how does this girl — woman — whoever she is — know his anniversary date? How come she's born in August, eight months after Rita moved out?

He twirls the shade-pull, dims the room. The screen glows. The cursor blinks. The table fan spins like karma on steroids.

It's signed Uma Ginther. Indian and German. Uma. Rita wouldn't pick Uma to complement his ancestry. Named after Uma Thurman? No. The actress would have been about nine in '82. If she is Rita's, the Hindu goddess's name reflects Rita's New Agey side. Ginther — old German name obscuring the Greeks populating Rita's mother's family.

Two years older than him — Rita'd be only forty-eight now. Who must she be now? Serve her right if she were reborn black and poor in sub-Saharan Africa — might learn a thing or two about economics. But kidney failure. She didn't deserve that.

Moments, images reappear: two hundred and forty pounds encased in acres of luminescent pale skin. Pink doughy face with owlish glasses. Rita lifting rosettes from hot oil in the narrow kitchen at the International Students' Center. His brown hand lightly touching hers as he helped her dust sugar over butterfly, pinwheel and star shapes. He remembers himself talking about crisp orange jalebis in India that would put those Norwegian rosettes to shame, telling her the name Rita is Indian — Sanskrit for
cosmic order. Reciting a recipe for butter chicken he'd read in Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook. The first unrelated woman whose hand he'd ever held.

What an idiot he was, mistaking culinary for cultural curiosity! Rita could have asked how he tied his turban, maybe sent him a card on a Gurpurb or Baisakhi day, or been a little curious about his relatives. Not Rita, before the wedding or after. She couldn't picture him anywhere but here, adult and a-historical.

Her laugh — oh yes. A tremor passing across her Buddha-belly. Filled with indulgence at the beginning. “Oh, Karan-be-er!” she'd say — mispronouncing his name. And later, with exasperation, “Kar-an!” — the name that now represents him in America.

Karan returns to his desk, crosses his ankles, leans forward, lets the gel in his wrist rest cool his pulse.

Don't reply, implore his mother's eyes from her frame on his desk.

His fingers are poised between thought and word.

“Dear Ms. Ginther: I'm sorry but you must have found the wrong person. Like Ginther, Singh is a common name …”

No.

Tension sharpens to a knot in his back.

“Dear Uma Ginther, I'm afraid you are quite mistaken. Rita and I met at UW-Madison. We were married in 1980, divorced in 1982. She moved to Detroit. Never once did she mention a child.”

But then Rita wouldn't, would she? Said she never wanted a husband for life. Even one who didn't mind a Rubenesque woman and was as irresistible as Karan used to be. He'd believed her motives were pure — pure economics. But every woman must have a baby, na? Probably stopped taking her pills.

But fathers have duties! Most women drag men into court, sue for child support, garnish wages. Not Rita. She must have
done okay. First in her family to move off the farm, a degree in industrial engineering, why wouldn't she?

Don't fathers have rights too? But Rita wouldn't want to share her child; after two years of living with her, he wasn't fooled by her softness. It surrounded a hard little heart.

What he could say: “Dear Ms. Uma Ginther, I'm afraid you are quite mistaken. Rita and I had what in the old days would be termed a marriage of convenience. We divorced after the required two years. I paid her in full. She moved back to Detroit. Never once did she mention a child. There must have been another man after me.”

He draws away. Such a reply cannot be written. Homeland Security or the FBI or the CIA could still be monitoring his email. They'd be only too happy to deport him. And campuswatch.org denounces more than professors of Middle Eastern Studies. He should know that, even if Homeland Security hadn't “interviewed” him. And just a few weeks ago, lusting for tenure and spurred by the interview, he'd paid an attorney to apply for his change of status from resident alien to citizen. He mustn't jeopardize that application.

A brown scent insinuates itself under his door. Scorched popcorn. He closes out of his e-mail program and heads to the faculty lounge down the hall.

It's Thayne Grey, UCSB's star history prof, almost setting off the fire alarm again. An otherwise intelligent man. Never learns.

A cup of orange pekoe fortifies Karan. He returns reluctantly to the e-mail.

Why isn't he more surprised by this contact? More certain that this girl, woman, female, whoever she is, is not his offspring? But the blood spinning his heart chakra says she is, the quickening in his breathing says yes, she is.

Think of it! A daughter. Someone of his blood on this continent, a member of his family who isn't in the next country or
hemisphere. Is she fat like Rita? Thin like him? Is she a natural blond, or dark-haired like him? Eyes? Dark — brown genes trump blue. She could have attached a photo. If she is his daughter, how might he explain her existence to his sisters? Gagan will look down her jewelled nose, then probe gently but relentlessly in her professional way. Minni will be voluble about the double standards he applies to his wrongdoings in contrast to hers.