Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories (5 page)

“Moving here from somewhere else? Retiring?”

Yes, probably retiring. The Hamiltons were not sure.

“I'm so glad for the rhubarb. And your roses. Such a relief, only two people moving in. We were rather worried, you know, Arthur and I.”

Well, actually … more than two, perhaps. The agent had said something about a married son and a married daughter …

“Good gracious! All in the same house? Very odd, isn't it?”

Yes, a bit unusual perhaps.

“University people?”

No. The Hamiltons thought not. A restaurant, they believed. Family business. Something like that.

Well, at least a family. Six people. It could have been so much worse.

Not six exactly, the Hamiltons confessed. The young couples had some children.

“How many children?”

Five in all, they believed.

Mrs Phillips concentrated on her tea, swallowing hot sweet comfort. Ada Watts leaned forward and jabbed the air with one of her canes. “What is the name of these people?”

Mrs Hamilton looked mournfully at her husband who looked at his hands. “We couldn't help it,” he said apologetically. “We haven't even met them, you know. Agent arranged everything. Property taxes due on both places, you know. We had to have the money. They met our price. There was nothing we could do.”

Mrs Phillips proffered her teapot. “You mustn't think anyone is blaming you. These things happen.”

The cane rapped out the question again: “What is the name?”

“The name is Wong.”

“I knew it! I knew it!” Ada Watts gave a snort, part triumph at being undeceivable, part battle cry.
“The
Wongs, I suppose? Own half the real estate in town!”

Yes, the Hamiltons admitted forlornly. Those Wongs.

Ada Watts gyrated between her canes into an upright position. “First the Frisbees, now the soy sauce!” She stumped toward the front door and turned to admonish them all with one of her canes. “They'll tack on dormers and annexes, you know. They'll turn your house into a jigsaw puzzle. We won't see the block for boarders and parked cars.” She pounded the hallway carpet with her cane. “They are trying to buy us all out, of course. First they'll drive us crazy, then they'll drive us out. Well, we shall see who gives in first! We shall see who the survivors are! Lovely seedcake, Mrs Phillips. We must do this again.”

The crocuses came and went, and then the moving vans, and then the lilacs. The summer annuals would last for months and so would the Frisbees and footballs. And so would the music. Forever, it seemed. If you could call it music. A cacophony of stereo decibels and drums and shrieking voices and bass vibrations that invaded the house even through the storm windows, setting the delicate nerves of the harpsichord on edge. Of course, Mrs Phillips reminded herself, with students it would have been exactly the same. Their kind of music. She simply had not had to deal with it stuttering up through the floorboards before, attacking the very ground she walked on. Thump, thump, vibrate. She would rather share her stairwell.

She spoke to the Cotters over the back fence as they both clipped off the last of the wilting peony blossoms and staked their tomatoes.

“I think I am going to buy a condominium after all.”

“What's that you say?” Arthur Cotter asked, his hands full of mulch.

“A condominium. It's their radio. I simply cannot live with it. I've sealed up all the windows and I can shut out the sound, but I can still
feel
it.”

“They're in our tomatoes too, you know. I've got something for it.”

“No, no. The radio. I'm going to move, I think.”

Arthur Cotter cupped his ear toward her. “Can't quite catch …”

“Says she's going,” shouted Bessie Cotter. She explained: “Doesn't have his hearing aid on when he's gardening, you know.” And shouted again: “She's going. She can't stand the Wongs.”

“The what?”

“The Chinese family!” Bessie Cotter shouted into a sudden lull in the disc jockey's voice that boomed from the Wongs' kitchen window. “She can't stand them!”

“Oh no really!” Mrs Phillips was dismayed, glancing over her shoulder. “They're very nice people. I'm sure. It's just their radio.”

“The what?”

“Their radio!” she shouted.

“Radio doesn't bother us too much,” Bessie Cotter said.

Deafness, thought Mrs Phillips, has its advantages.

Mrs Phillips was unable to sleep. She understood why the music was called rock. She felt as though an avalanche of impermeable matter were pummelling her nerve ends. She got up and put on her robe, made herself some hot milk with cinnamon and honey, sat in her living-room and tried to think.

Around midnight, when everything was finally quiet, she tried the harpsichord. It had been jarred badly out of tune. She worked with silent absorption, timing it. She began to play Vivaldi. She began to feel at peace. Life was manageable after all. One simply needed to make adjustments.

She heard a car swing into the neighbouring driveway, heard a babble of talk and laughter. The son and his wife were given to partying. Mrs Phillips smiled benignly and played Vivaldi. To each his own life.

Then it came at her again, that intrusive insistent rhythm, that rude music. One o'clock in the morning. It was too much. She put her forehead against the keyboard and wept.

By dawn, after a tossing dream-riddled sleep, a solution had presented itself to her. She would simply visit her new neighbours and ask them very politely to turn their music down. A reasonable request, surely. People were rational. It was natural to want to get along with one's neighbours. There was no reason why they would refuse. Why was she shaking so? Why were her palms wet and cold?

After her second cup of coffee, she put on a light jacket and combed her hair. But her legs felt as though they were just testing themselves after a long illness and she had to sit down again. Too much coffee perhaps. She put on the kettle and made a pot of tea. She drank a cup.

Now, she told herself firmly, as she did on Sundays before visiting her aunt in the nursing home. This has to be done and that is all there is to it.

Outside it was clear and sunny and the Wongs' front path was a curious mosaic of mushrooms and roots spread on swathes of cheesedoth to dry in the sun. The old Mrs Wong, a tiny figure, was sitting cross-legged beside the path, taking up one by one the gnarled root-like things, doing something to them with her fingers.

“Good morning,” said Mrs Phillips hesitantly, disconcerted by new irregularities.

The old lady looked at her and nodded several times.

“I wonder if I might have a word with your son perhaps? Or is it your son-in-law?”

The old lady nodded rapidly again and went on doing things to the roots.

“Ah, could you … could I? … Shall I go to your front door?”

She was wondering how to negotiate the mushrooms and reach the front steps without damaging anything. The old lady offered no suggestions. Mrs Phillips tiptoed gingerly between the roots and reached the porch. There no longer seemed to be a doorbell, though a set of wind-chimes dangled down from the door-frame.

“Should I … do I tap the chimes?”

“No use talking to my mother,” said a voice through the suddenly opened door. “She doesn't speak any English.”

“Oh! Actually, it was you I wished to speak to, Mr Wong. You are the son, I believe?”

“The son.” He laughed loudly, in a high-pitched nasal way. “Yes indeed, ma'am. I am the son.” His laugh sounded Chinese, but his voice sounded local. Home grown. And slightly snide. No different from her own son's. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering …” She hated the way her voice quavered. “I have a small request. I don't like to make a fuss, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind playing your radio more softly, especially at night. Much more softly, actually.”

He stared at her, his eyebrows puckering. “It's a free country, ma'am.”

“Yes, of course it is. But we do … in this country, that is … we do try to respect each other's rights. We have very different tastes in music, you see. You people …”

“What do you mean,
we people
?” he demanded belligerently.

“I mean: you people who like rock music …”

“I was born in this country same as you, lady. You feel you have special privileges?”

“No, of course not, Mr Wong. This is quite uncalled for. I was only asking if it is necessary to have your radio quite so
loud …”

“You been across the road to speak to those students about their stereos?”

“Well, no … not yet … because I keep my storm windows … But if their sound carried … if they kept me awake after midnight …”

“I've got more right than those students, lady. I've got legal title to this land and they're just tenants. My tenants, as it happens. Now if you'll excuse me.”

He closed the door.

Mrs Phillips felt decidedly unsteady. She leaned on the porch railing and sank down to sit on the top step. She put her hands to her cheeks and realised that she was weeping. It was not the sort of thing she approved of in public but she did not seem to be able to do anything about it.

I shall have to leave of course, she thought. The world of high ceilings and harpsichords and sweet neighbourhood silence was irretrievably lost. She had outlived it. It could not be transplanted to a condominium, it was as outmoded as gas lighting. Well, she had survived other losses.

She realised with embarrassment that old Mrs Wong was staring at her.

“Oh, I'm so sorry. Crying here on your step. It's an upsetting time for me.”

Then she remembered that Mrs Wong did not speak English. What formidable isolation, she thought. How long has she been in this country? Thirty years, if the son was born here. At least thirty years.

“How have you been able to stand it?” she asked aloud. “Whom do you speak to? What have you lost?”

The old lady suddenly began to talk, earnestly, rapidly, in pell-mell Chinese. It seemed to Mrs Phillips that she spoke of ancient courtyards and green rice paddies and granary floors. Of bound feet perhaps, and of family shrines.

Mrs Phillips moved down to the bottom step. “Of course,” she said, “as long as we are alive nothing is completely lost. In here and in here” – she touched her own forehead lightly, then Mrs Wong's – “it is still complete.” She formed a sphere with her hands. “Everything still exists whole for us.”

Mrs Wong nodded vehemently, smiling. She patted the ground beside her. Mrs Phillips hesitated a moment. (She had never sat on the ground.) She kneeled instead, as though she were about to prune her roses, and began to help with the roots, breaking them into fragments with her fingers.

Waiting

Mr Matthew Thomas owed his name and faith, as well as his lands, to those ancestors of lowly caste who had seen the salvation of the Lord. (It had been brought to South India by St Thomas the Apostle, and by later waves of Portuguese Jesuits, Dutch Protestants, and British missionaries.) Now, heir of both East and West, Matthew Thomas sat quietly in one of the chairs at the crowded Air India office, waiting for his turn. It was necessary to make inquiries on behalf of a cousin of his wife, and although his wife had died ten years ago, these family obligations continued. The cousin, whose son was to be sent overseas for a brief period of foreign education, lived in the village of Parassala and could not get down to Trivandrum during the rice harvest. Mr Matthew Thomas did not mind. He had much to think about on the subject of sons and daughters and foreign travel, and he was glad of this opportunity for quiet contemplation away from the noisy happiness of his son's house.

It was true that he had been waiting since nine o'clock that morning and it was now half past three in the afternoon. It was also true that things would have been more pleasant if the ceiling fan had been turning, for it was that steamy season when the monsoon is petering out, and the air hangs as still and hot and heavy as a mosquito net over a sick-bed. But the fan had limped to a halt over an hour ago, stricken by the almost daily power failure, and one simply accepted such little inconveniences.

Besides, Mr Thomas could look from the comfortable vantage point of today back toward yesterday, which had also been spent at the Air India office, but since he had arrived too late to find a chair it had been necessary to stand all day. At the end of the day, someone had told him that he was supposed to sign his name in the book at the desk and that he would be called when his turn came. Wiser now, he had arrived early in the morning, signed his name, and found a chair. He was confident that his turn would come today, and until it did he could sit and think in comfort. Mr Thomas was often conscious of God's goodness to him in such matters. All the gods were the same, he reflected, thinking fondly of the auspicious match which had just been arranged for the daughter of his neighbour Mr Balakrishnan Pillai. Lord Vishnu; Lord Shiva; the Allah of his friend Mr Karim, the baker; the One True God of his own church: all protected their faithful. He did not dwell on paradox.

God was merciful. It was sufficient.

The problem which demanded attention, and which Mr Thomas turned over and over in his mind, peacefully and appraisingly as he might examine one of his coconuts, concerned both his married daughter in Burlington, Vermont, and the white woman waiting in another chair in the Air India office.

Burlingtonvermont. Burlingtonvermont. What a strange word it was. This was how his son-in-law had pronounced it. His daughter had explained in a letter that it was like saying Trivandrum, Kerala. But who would ever say Trivandrum, Kerala? Why would they say it? He had been deeply startled yesterday morning to hear the word suddenly spoken aloud, just when he was thinking of his daughter. Burlingtonvermont. The white women had said it to the clerk at the counter, and she had been told to write her name in the book and wait for her turn.

This is a strange and wonderful thing, he had thought. And now he understood why God had arranged these two days of waiting. It was ordained so that he would see this woman who came, it seemed, from the place where his daughter was; so that he might have time to study her at leisure and consider what he should do.

He thought of Kumari, his youngest and favourite child. What did she do in Burlingtonvermont? He tried to picture her now that she was in her confinement, her silk sari swelling slightly over his grandchild. A terrible thought suddenly presented itself to him. If she had no servants, who was marketing for her at this time when she should not leave the house? Surely she herself was not…? No. His mind turned from the idea, yet the bothersome riddles accumulated.

She was in her third month now, so he knew from the four child-bearings of his own wife that she would be craving for sweet mango pickle. He had written to say he would send a package of this delicacy.
Dear daddy,
she had written back,
please do not send the sweet pickle. I have no need of anything. I am perfectly happy.

How could this be? It was true that her parents-in-law lived only five kilometres distant in the same city, and her brother-in- law and his wife also lived close by, and of course they would do her marketing and bring her the foods she craved. Of course, they were her true family now that she was married. Even so, when a woman was in the family way, it was a time when she might return to the house of her father, when she would want to eat the delicacies of the house of her birth.

He could not complain of the marriage. He was very happy with the marriages of all four of his children. They had all made alliances with Christian families of high caste. He had been able to provide handsome dowries for his daughters, and the wives of his sons had brought both wealth and beauty with them. God had been good. It was just a little sad that his elder daughter's husband was chief government engineer for Tamil Nadu instead of Kerala, and was therefore living in Madras. But at least he saw them and his grandchildren at the annual festival of Onam.

It was four years since he had seen Kumari. The week after her wedding her husband and his family had returned to America, where they had been living for many years. Only to arrange the marriages of their sons had they come back to Kerala. The arrangements had been made through the mail. Mr Thomas had been content because the family was distantly related on his wife's side and he had known them many years ago, before they had left for America. Also the son was a professor of chemistry at the university in Burlingtonvermont, which was fitting for his daughter who had her B.A. in English literature. So they had come, the wedding had taken place, and they had gone.

For four years Mr Matthew Thomas had waited with increasing anxiety. What is a father to think when his daughter does not bear a child in all this time? Now, as God was merciful, a child was coming. Yet she had written:
Dear daddy, please do not send the sweet pickle. I am perfectly happy.

It had been the same when he had expressed his shock at her not having servants.
Dear daddy,
she had written,
you do not understand. Here we are not needing servants. The machines are doing everything. Your daughter and your son-in-law are very happy.
Of course this was most reassuring, if only he could really believe it. He worried about the snow and the cold. How was it possible to live with such cold? He worried about the food. The food in America is terrible, some businessmen at the Secretariat had told him. It is having no flavour. In America, they are not using any chili peppers. And yet, even at such a time as this, she did not want the sweet pickle. Could it mean that she had changed, that she had become like a Western woman?

He looked steadily and intently at the white woman in the room. Certainly, he thought, my daughter will be one of the most beautiful women in America. White women were so unattractive. It was not just their wheat-coloured hair, which did indeed look strange, but they seemed to have no understanding of the proper methods of beauty. They let their hair fly as dry and fluffy as rice chaff at threshing time instead of combing it with coconut oil so that it hung wet and glossy.

The woman was wearing a sari, which was, without question, better than the other Western women he had sometimes seen at the Mascot Hotel; those women had worn trousers as if they were men. It was amazing that American men allowed their women to appear so ugly. True, he had heard it said that women in the north of India wore trousers, but Mr Thomas did not believe it. An Indian woman would not do such a thing. Once he had seen a white woman in a short dress, of the kind worn by little girls, with half her legs brazenly showing. He had turned away in embarrassment.

Mr Thomas was pleased that the woman from Burlingtonver- mont was wearing a sari. Still, it did not look right with pale skin and pale hair. It is the best she can do, he concluded to himself. It is simply not possible for them to look beautiful, no matter what they do.

The thing that was important, and must now be considered was what to do with this manifestation sent by God. The woman from Burlingtonvermont perhaps had all the answers to his questions. Perhaps she could even explain the matter of the sweet pickle. But what to do? One did not speak to a woman outside of the family. And yet why else would it have been arranged that he should have two days to observe this very woman? God would also arrange the solution, he thought simply. He had only to wait.

As he continued to study that strange pale face an amazing thing happened. A tear rolled slowly down one cheek and fell into the soft folds of the sari. Mr Thomas was shocked and looked away. After a little while, he looked back again. The woman seemed to be holding herself very tightly, as still as death, he thought. Her hands were clasped together in her lap so rigidly that the knuckles showed white. Her eyes were lowered, but the lashes glistened wetly. It must be a matter of love, he thought. Tragic love. Her parents have forbidden the match. For what other reason could a young woman, scarcely more than a girl, be weeping? Then his name was called and he went to the counter.

At the counter, Mr Chandrashekharan Nair consulted the timetables and folders which would answer the queries of Mr Matthew Thomas. He handled his sheaves of printed information reverently, occasionally pausing to make a small notation in ink in one of the margins, or to dignify a page with one of his rubber stamps. It always gave him a sense of pleasurable power. It was so fitting that the Nairs, who had from ancient times guarded the Maharajah of Travancore and defended his lands, should be as it were the guardians of Kerala in this modern age, watchmen over all the means of entry and egress.

It had given him particular pleasure to announce the name of Mr Matthew Thomas. It was like the pleasure which comes after a summer's day of torpid discomfort, when the air is as damp and still as funeral bindings, until the monsoon bursts in a torrent of cool blessing. Just such a salvific release from several days of tension had come when he passed over the name of Miss Jennifer Harper to announce instead that of Mr Matthew Thomas.

Life was distressingly complicated at the moment for Chandrashekharan Nair, who was twenty-six years old, and who owed his present position to his master's degree in economics as well as to his uncle who was a regional manager for Air India. The trouble was that two years ago, when he was still a student at the University of Kerala, he had joined one of the Marxist student groups. Well, in a sense joined. They had been an interesting bunch, livelier than other students. Mostly low-caste of course, even Harijans, not the sort of people one usually associated with, and this gave a risqu
é
sense of exhilaration. But the leaders had all been decent fellows from the right families – Nairs, Pillais, Iyers. They read a bit too much for his liking, but the demonstrations had been rather fun, milling along Mahatma Gandhi Road in front of the Secretariat, confusing the traffic, making the withered old buffalo-cart drivers curse, jeering at the occasional American tourist. It was a student sort of thing to do. He had not expected that they would hang on to him in this way. It was beginning to become very embarrassing.

Of course he was all for progress. He agreed that more had to be done for the poor people. He felt that when he had his own household he would not expect so much from the
peon
as his father did. They really should not make the boy walk five kilometres each noontime to take young Hari's lunch to him at college, he thought. It was too much for a twelve-year-old boy.

In theory, he also agreed with the Marxists about dowry. Nevertheless, when he had studied so hard for his master's degree, he felt he could expect a
lakh
of rupees from his bride's family. That was simple justice. He would be providing her with security and prestige. He had
earned
the money. Strictly speaking, it was not dowry. Dowries were illegal anyway. It was simply that a girl's family would be embarrassed not to provide well for her, and a bridegroom from a good family, with a master's degree into the bargain, had every right to expect that they provide for her in a manner suited to his status.

Chandrashekharan Nair's marriage, and his
lakh
of rupees, was all but arranged. There was one slight problem. The girl's family was raising questions about his associations with the Marxists. His father had assured them that this had been the passing fancy of a student, wild oats only, but they wanted something more, a public statement or action.

Chandrashekharan Nair was nervous. One of his cousins, who had held an influential position in the Congress party of Kerala, was now under attack in the newspapers. It was possible that he would have to stand trial for obscure things, and his career would be ruined. It did not seem likely that the Marxists would regain total power in Kerala, but they were becoming stronger all the time and one should not take chances. It was not wise to be on record for any political opinion, for or against anything. One should always appear knowing but vague, erudite but equivocal.

Chandrashekharan Nair leafed through the problems in his mind day after day as he leafed through the papers on his desk. The girl's family was waiting. His own family was waiting. His father was becoming annoyed. It was simply not fair that he should be forced into such a dangerous position. Three days ago some of his former Marxist friends had come to the office. They were jubilant about the Coca-Cola business, and had just erected near the Secretariat a huge billboard showing Coca-Cola bottles toppling onto lots of little American businessmen who were scattering like ants. There was to be a major demonstration and they wanted him to take part.

All of Chandrashekharan Nair's anxiety became focused on the American girl who had walked into his office yesterday. It was her fault, the fault of Americans and their Coca-Cola and their independent women, that all these problems had come to plague his life. And then the glimmer of a solution appeared to him. He would make a public statement about Coca-Cola. He would praise the new Indian drink and the name chosen for it. He would mention Gandhi, he would say that this non-violent method, following in Gandhiji's footsteps, was the correct political way for India. All this was quite safe. Morarji Desai and Raj Narain were saying it in the newspapers every day. The girl's family would be satisfied. But he would also say a few carefully ambiguous words about American businessmen that would please the Marxists. And as he slid easily over Miss Jennifer Harper's name, he thought with a surge of delight of how he would tell his Marxist friends in private of his personal triumphant struggle with an imperialist in the Air India office.