An Obedient Father (4 page)

"I can get someone else," I said softly. "Don't worry." It took a moment for Anita's body to loosen. When the lines on her forehead had eased, I said in a light joking voice, "You're like me. Under pressure we stop thinking." Anita didn't reply.

Asha came back with the glass of water. "How was school?" I asked.

"Good."

She looked at me as I drank and I could tell that already our morning conversation and this gift had shifted our relationship. I put the glass on the ground and asked, "Your teachers don't bother you, do they?"

"No. I have good teachers."

"It's bad to hit children." I felt silly for saying something this obvious, so I tried hiding my inanity with more words. "When I was in higher secondary, the untouchables sat in the back of the class.

The teachers couldn't slap the untouchables because then they would be touching them. The untouchables knew this and would always be talking. Sometimes the teachers became very angry, and to shut up the untouchables they threw pieces of chalk at them. And the untouchables, because all the students sat on the floor, would race around on their hands and knees, dodging the chalk."

When I churned my arms to show how swiftly the untouchables crawled, Asha laughed and said, "My teachers only hit with rulers." She was quiet for a moment and then spoke eagerly: "I had something happen. There's a girl in school who last week got one of those soft papers you blow your nose on. Those papers that rich people use instead of handkerchiefs in advertisements. She's been using it all week. She doesn't have a cold, but she keeps putting it in her nose. I told her today the paper was ugly She said, 'If I throw it away, you'll take it.' I said I wouldn't, so she threw it onto the floor and waited. Two girls tried grabbing it. The one who got it blew her nose in it all day"

I laughed at Asha's attention to detail and tried tickling her stomach. Asha jumped away, smiling. "Do you want to come with me to a wedding reception tonight? Since I can't eat much, I should bring someone who can." I said the last sentence because I felt I had to wheedle Anita's permission to do this. The possibility of taking Asha out of the sadness of her life and showing her all the people who knew me had come to me as I left Rosary School with the bag of money

"This is Mr. Gupta's?" Anita asked.

"I can show her off to everybody I know"

"Will there be ice cream and Campa Cola?" Asha said.

"You can just eat ice cream if you want."

Asha giggled at the idea.

"How is Mr. Gupta?" Anita inquired.

Mr. Gupta's son had eloped with a Sikh and this wedding party was coming after many tears and curses. "He keeps wanting to know what he did wrong." Anita sat down on a chair across from me. "I tell him it's all written in the stars."

"It'll be late when you come home. Asha has school tomorrow."

"We'll take an autorickshaw."

Anita looked at Asha beating the air with a badminton racket. Asha was moving from side to side and talking to herself as she played an imaginary opponent. "You can't beat me."

The sun had set forty minutes earlier, and the sidewalks and road were soaked in the same even gray light. I had been so afraid of having nothing to say to Asha that ever since we got in the autorickshaw I had been unable to stop talking. "Mr. Gupta's son had gone with a friend to look at a used car and the man selling it had a daughter who gave them water. Ajay fell in love immediately," I shouted over the beating of the engine. The boy driving the three-wheeler ground gears as he sought the narrow channels of movement which kept appearing and disappearing in the traffic. "I've never seen her, but Sikh women are either very beautiful or very ugly" Asha was looking out of the autorickshaw and I wanted her to listen to me. "I actually predicted this. Long ago, when he was about to go off to college, I read his horoscope and predicted it. And then one day Mr. Gupta comes crying to me: 'Oh, Mr. Karan! I have gone bankrupt.' " Asha held her folded hands between her legs and stared at the traffic. She appeared stunned to have left the flat and to be on the way to a party. Asha wore olive shorts and a white shirt. I saw again how small her kneecaps were. I wore a blue shirt that stretched so tight across my stomach that the spaces between the buttons were puckered open like small hungry mouths. I was using cologne and wondered if Asha had noticed. "I told him, 'What use is it to cry. Pretend everything happened with your permission and that way your nose won't be cut off before everyone. People always say bad things anyway' " As I spoke, I actually began feeling as though I were Mr. Gupta's friend. We passed through the Old Vegetable Market. The vendors were lighting the kerosene lamps, which look like iron-stemmed tulips. "I am only a junior officer," I said, "but Mr. Gupta always turns to me for advice. I spend as much time in his room as I do behind my own desk. If only Mrs. Chauduri would retire, I could be senior junior officer. She's had cancer for six years. She's worked hard. She deserves her rest. She doesn't even come into the office much. Sometimes she sends her son to pick up her files."

I tried thinking of something that might interest Asha. Making cheese had become illegal a few weeks ago when the heat started and cows began giving less milk. "There are going to be cheese dishes, I'm sure. Mr. Gupta has only one son and he's a rich man. He's not going to wait for the rains to come so he can have cheese at his son's wedding reception. You want to bet how many cheese dishes there are going to be? Three? Five?"

After a pause, Asha unenthusiastically guessed, "Four."

"I'll bet five." When the conversation didn't move from there, I said, "There's going to be so much ice cream. Did your father buy you ice cream often?"

Asha didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, "No, but I like to think he did. I like to think he would come to me from his office during recess and take me with him to drink Campa Cola."

This answer struck me not as just pitiful but as frightening. To slip into fantasy like this seemed the first step into madness. Looking at Asha at that moment I felt as if I had entered my bedroom late at night and found a strange man sitting quietly on my cot. "You're imaginative," I murmured. I was silent for several minutes. We had passed Kamla Nagar and were speeding down a straight road. Lights shone from the houses and shops on either side. "Thinking these things might hurt you in some way," I told her and, putting one arm around her shoulders, pulled her to me.

Strings of red and green lightbulbs fell three stories from the roof and covered the front of Mr. Gupta's house. There were cars parked on both sides of the street. There was a large fenced green across from his home. Because it is so dirty in the Old Vegetable Market that your spit always holds black grains, this park is what I always associated with Mr. Gupta's wealth and power.

When Mr. Gupta joined the education department twelve years ago, each education subject had collected its own political donations. The physical education program had always had more influence than other departments because the physical education teachers, like the captains of Calcutta's athletic clubs, have access to large pools of hooligans. Only when Rajiv Gandhi lost the prime ministership was Mr. Gupta able to consolidate fund-raising under himself in return for continued loyalty to the Congress Party.

Mr. Gupta was standing at his gate, receiving visitors. The veranda behind him was crowded with guests. Waiters in red turbans and white jackets and pants moved among them carrying trays. I took Asha's hand in mine and walked up to Mr. Gupta. He was wearing a handsome blue suit and a tie flecked with yellow and blue. "This is my granddaughter, Asha," I said after he had thanked me for coming.

He bowed and shook Asha's hand. "You do my house honor," he said. Asha was so surprised by his formality she moved behind me. Mr. Gupta is tall and muscular, with delicate features and hair that is just turning gray. "We have all this ice cream and cold drinks and so few children," he said seriously. "Children are the only ones who can really appreciate ice cream. Don't you think so, Mr. Karan?"

"I'll eat a lot," Asha promised.

"I know you will," Mr. Gupta said, and prodded Asha's stomach with a finger. "You're so thin you look as though you could die right here." He looked at me. "If you could, you'd bring your entire family to eat." Mr. Gupta laughed.

Sisterfucker! I thought. He reached around me to shake someone's hand. Without knowing it, I put my hand on Mr. Gupta's shoulder and shouted, "Happy?" He appeared surprised. "Happy?" I bellowed again to fluster him. Mr. Gupta looked embarrassed and I felt powerful. "A gift," I said, and from my pants pocket pulled out an envelope with a hundred and one rupees.

"Very kind." He smiled and wrote my name on the envelope with a small pencil.

"Any booze tonight, Mr. Gupta? We should celebrate. Guess what Father Joseph gave. I will only drink foreign whiskey, though." I let my voice ring with a village accent to remind him that we were both small corrupt bureaucrats.

Mr. Gupta looked confused but kept smiling. He tried leaning around me and shaking a hand. I moved into his way to tell him how much Father Joseph had given. But Mr. Gupta stopped smiling and snapped, "J^st ask the waiters and they'll get it from the back."

I moved onto the veranda. I stopped a waiter and asked for a whiskey and a Pepsi Lahar for Asha. Asha peered around. Her hand was so small in mine that I felt enormous.

More men than usual were wearing traditional kurta pajamas instead of suits in anticipation of a BJP victory. There were perhaps a dozen Sikh men with their beards tied beneath their chin. All the Sikhs wore suits. After the thousands of Sikhs who had been set on fire and macheted to death in the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination, some of these men must carry a constant sense of physical danger with them. What did they feel, I wondered, at seeing all these Hindus so adaptable to the possibility of BJP power?

My whiskey came and I drank it in two gulps. The force of it made me shake. "Acid," I said, grinning at Asha. She was sucking her Pepsi Lahar through a straw. After she finished, she asked if she could save the straw and take it home. I felt embarrassed for her. "I'll buy you a box of straws tomorrow." I ordered another whiskey and a cold drink. "A full glass of whiskey," I said.

"Of course, sahib," the waiter said, and I knew he would want a tip.

I saw Mrs. Chauduri moving around the veranda. She was talking and eating a samosa from a little plate and looking as if she could live forever. "Hello! Mrs. Chauduri," I shouted at her. I towed Asha behind me as I moved through the crowd. Mrs. Chauduri was wearing a purple sari that made her look like an eggplant. "What a nice sari," I said, feeling the slight anger of sycophancy and the sly joy of lying. "I hope you are better." She had had her second breast removed recently and I wondered whether her husband was unhappy about this or whether he found some strange pleasure at seeing a scarred woman beneath him.

"It is as God wills," she answered, shrugging. "I have to live for my husband and sons." Whenever she talked of her illness, her voice became soft and slightly vain. The voice made me think of how when Mrs. Chauduri was a school principal she nearly ended up in jail for secretly selling ten thousand rupees' worth of her science department's mercury.

"God is only testing you, Mrs. Chauduri. I am sure you will be fine." She nodded and sipped her cold drink. I noticed that I was slightly aroused at the idea of what her chest, creased by the surgery, must look like. This was the first time in several months that I had had such feelings.

The waiter came with my whiskey. "Reward, sir, reward," he said. "You are rich. I am poor."

I avoided his eyes and praised Mrs. Chauduri for her bravery. Then I introduced Asha and asked, "Have you seen Mr. Mishra?" She hadn't. Mr. Mishra didn't like Mr. Gupta and I was glad to know that he had been brave enough not to come.

Mrs. Chauduri moved closer to me. "Mr. Gupta's son is passed out drunk. That's why he isn't out shaking hands. And they can't show the girl without him." Noticing my surprise at her bitter voice, she added, "The girl's family is here. Why should their friends not get to see their daughter?" After Mr. Bajwa was charged with corruption, Mrs. Chauduri should have become Mr. Gupta's representative, but she had been passed over because she was a woman. Now she was always presenting examples of injustice against women.

Asha looked bored, so we left Mrs. Chauduri and wandered through the crowd. I have no resistance to alcohol and the second drink pushed me into drunkenness. The world and my mind appeared to move at two different speeds. When I turned my head, the people before me also shifted. I introduced Asha to several people. "Isn't she beautiful?" I would challenge them. Asha smiled when

I demanded praise for her. I felt as if I could do anything and it wouldn't matter.

I ordered another drink and moved with Asha into the room where the buffet was laid out. "Oh!" she said. The walls were lined with tables covered by trays laden with food. On one side of the room there were ice chests full of ice cream. As we moved around the tables, we counted the cheese dishes. Nine, not including desserts. Asha filled her plate so high, food overflowed it and dripped down her wrist. At first I felt embarrassed by her greed; then I saw a fat woman with a ring on every finger and a heavy gold necklace picking cubes of cheese out of a tray.

Asha and I stood in a corner of the room and ate. It was very hot and sweat kept slipping into my eyes. But the food was so good that neither of us wanted to leave the room. I ate only a little bit, but chewed every mouthful for a long time. "Don't eat so much that you have no space for ice cream," I said to Asha.

She laughed and said, "Don't worry." Asha went back for a second plate. Her blouse was tucked in and I noticed how tiny her waist was. I put my plate down. I wanted to live a long time.

In the middle of the second plate, Asha suddenly turned pale. I took her to the bathroom to vomit. Then I got her a bottle of Campa Cola to rinse her mouth with. "Spit it out," I said, cupping the back of her head in my hand, "you're rich tonight."