Before We Visit the Goddess (5 page)

She hid her face. How mortifying, that he who had always looked at her with admiration should see her like this. She made a vague gesture—
please go away
. But he lowered himself to the floor beside her, his lanky knees drawn up. The unexpectedness of it made her look up. His eyes were distressed. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. Clearly, he had never been in such a situation before. She felt a hysterical laugh spiraling up and had to hide her face in her sari.

His hand—tentative, nervous—touched her shoulder. “Don't cry like that, please. Maybe I can help—”

Something in his voice, in those awkward, patting motions. A plan formed in my head. I held on to it like a drowning woman. I did not allow myself to think of anything, of anyone else. Tara, can you blame me? I lifted my face to him and smiled my prettiest, saddest, falsest smile.

He took her to a cousin's house, his only family in Kolkata. “Here's a student of mine,” he said, “homeless because of a rich woman's selfish whim. Please keep her until the end of the college year. I'll pay—”

“An unknown girl, Bijan?” His cousin was dubious. “Who knows why those people forced her to leave their house? Maybe she's a thief—”

“I told you—she lost an important card game where she was the rich woman's partner. The woman was furious because she had to hand over a lot of money. She threw Sabitri out into the night. If I hadn't found her, anything might have happened! I can't force you to help her, but if you don't, understand this: we will never speak again.”

The inflexibility in his voice surprised me and frightened his cousin. She gave in.

He came by each evening to help with my studies, for I was dreadfully behind. When he was not around, the cousin was cold to me. Perhaps, with a woman's instinct, she saw into my crooked core. She warned him, but he would not listen. Granddaughter, he had love enough for the both of us.

Each day Sabitri checked the papers surreptitiously. One morning she saw it: “Mittirs of Shyambazar Celebrate Wedding of Their Only Son to Beautiful Coal Mine Heiress.” There were photographs. The heiress was beautiful indeed. With a gritted heart Sabitri threw herself into her studies. She made herself meek and helpful in the house until she won the cousin over. Everything happened as she had planned: she passed her classes; Bijan asked her to marry him; the cousin urged her to agree. When Sabitri wept, they thought it was from grateful joy.

The newlyweds went to the village to pay their respects. Sabitri's parents were astonished but not displeased. Her father was relieved that they had had a quiet temple wedding in Kalighat for which he did not have to pay. The relatives swung between respect for the professor son-in-law and envy at Sabitri's good luck, once again undeserved. Durga was delighted that Bijan wanted Sabitri to continue her studies.

But Tara, I didn't do that. Within a year I was expecting a child. I dropped out of college, and though Bijan encouraged me to go back once the child was born, I no longer wanted to. Once again, I had been seduced by a different dream.

Bijan had published his research in a journal, something very intellectual that Sabitri didn't understand. What she did understand was that several companies wanted to hire him. They were willing to pay him highly. Give him a prestigious title. Bijan would have preferred to live in their one-bedroom flat and continue teaching. Sabitri set to persuading him otherwise.

Her strategy lacked originality, but she was aided by the fact that he had never been with a woman before. Additionally, he was in love. She cooked him the dishes he most enjoyed, the comfort foods of a man who had grown up poor—rice, yellow mung dal, fried brinjal. From her own life, she knew them well. After dinner she put on a thin cotton night-chemise, which showed off her figure—she had recently taken on this Westernized habit—and laid their daughter, Bela, freshly changed and powdered, in his lap. How he loved that child! He could play toe-games with her all evening, making funny noises that set her giggling. Sabitri sat next to them, leaning her head on his shoulder. It was so peaceful that she almost forgot what she was there to do.

A sentence here, a phrase there, a small, plaintive smile, the slight press of a breast against his arm. That's all it took, because he wanted to give his wife and child the best of everything. Did he guess the game Sabitri was playing? If so, he forgave her. He joined a giant oil corporation with tentacles everywhere and found that he did not dislike it as much as he had feared. He discovered he had a special talent for solving problems. He was too honest, blunt in his answers, but the management loved him in spite of that. Or perhaps because of it. These were rare qualities in the corporate world. He was promoted, then promoted again, then sent to their headquarters in Delhi to be groomed for higher leadership.

Did I love him, Granddaughter? I'll answer by saying I was the best possible wife. Certainly I loved our life in the capital, a flat in a wealthy colony, a motorcar, respectful servants who believed that I had been born into affluence. I took classes in English conversation and comportment, and learned that I, too, had a talent. I built a reputation for hosting the best parties. I knew how to charm the most taciturn guest into chatting. I never skimped on the alcohol, even if it meant we had to eat rice and lentils for the rest of the month. I created desserts that became the talk of the town. I wonder if Bijan realized that many of his tough deals fell into place because of my dinners.

After seven years of service, Bijan was sent back to Kolkata with yet another promotion. Sabitri was both delighted and uneasy. The sooty, sprawling city of her first humiliation and heartbreak had a hold on her like no other place. The smallest triumph here meant more than the hugest victories elsewhere. They lived on the top floor of a tall building, and sometimes it seemed to her, as she stood on the balcony and looked down on the treetops, that the city had spread itself at her feet. But the past still rankled. Sometimes, after dropping Bela at school, she would ask the driver to take her past the men's college. The memory of that night when she wept outside the Women's Common Room was like a half-formed scab she could not stop picking at.

When on a visit to the village I learned from my mother that Leelamoyi was now a widow and in ill health, alone in the old mansion because her rich daughter-in-law refused to live with her, I formed a plan.

I lie, Tara. The plan had been in me for a long time, like a dormant virus, waiting.

When Sabitri told Bijan that she wanted to visit Leelamoyi, he approved. “I'm glad you've decided to forgive her. After all, if she hadn't forced you to leave her house, we wouldn't be married!”

She nodded. There was no point in telling this straightforward man that she was impelled by a darker motive. She sent a note, accompanied by an expensive basket of fruits, and received a reply in Sarkar Moshai's spidery handwriting. Leelamoyi would like to see her.

That morning, Granddaughter, I dressed with care. I wore a silk sari with a thick gold border and my best jewelry. I made your mother wear a lace dress and shiny new shoes even though she complained that they hurt her feet. (But it was only a mild complaint because she was a biddable girl. Who would have guessed that she'd give me so much grief in later years?) This I did because I knew that Leelamoyi had no grandchildren.

As the car approached the Mittir house, Sabitri found that her hands were shaking. She hid them in the folds of her sari. The house looked shrunken; paint was peeling in parts; here and there, broken shutters hung dangling. There was no darwan on duty, so the driver had to get down and push open the rusting gates. She stepped out, holding tight to her daughter's hand and carrying a platter of Leelamoyi's favorite sweets.

The driver was reversing the car, going back to the office. He needed to take Bijan from one meeting to another. “Come back as soon as you drop Bijan Babu,” she instructed him. “I don't want to stay long.”

She rang the bell, but no one came. When she pushed at the door, it opened with a creak. Ahead of her was the stairway. How many times had she climbed it, wearing those saris that were hers and yet not hers, her heart beating light and rapid because she believed she was moving closer to her dream. The memory of that foolish young self overwhelmed her with tenderness and shame.

There was dirt on the staircase, crumbled stucco. She held up the edge of her sari and warned Bela not to touch the banister. Familiar, familiar, the second floor, that long corridor filled with anticipation, the airy windows through which bright trees peeped, that milk-white ocean of a bed.

Today the windows were shut. Through the haphazard light that seeped in between shutters, she saw a form on the bed, widow's white melting into the sheets, so still that for a disappointed lurch of the heart she believed that death had robbed her of revenge.

But no, the form struggled to sit up. She patted the bed for Sabitri to join her, called to a maid to fetch snacks for the visitors. Leelamoyi may have dwindled, but her voice was still autocratic.