The collected stories (24 page)

SINNING WITH ANNIE

I saw the girl's face; I was satisfied; I went away. For many days I called the laughing face to mind, the street, the lighted window, until all the anticipated details of my previous fantasy had been replaced by the actual details - unanticipated but now appropriate - of what I saw that evening. It was still fantasy, but substantiated by enough reality to make me patient in my errand. Something of my patience, deliberately exercised to sustain my little drama, may be seen when I say that I did not look up Chowdree's name in the telephone directory until after I visited the house. I could have done this as soon as I landed in America. I did not. And finally, when I did, it was as I expected, the only one in the book, at the right address. But to my surprise his initials were followed by the abbreviation for medical doctor.

For minutes I searched for credible symptoms, envisaging an allusive chat with Chowdree the physician as he tapped my back and crushed the wooden tongue depresser into his wastebasket. I could become his patient. I rejected this as too convenient and, as I had by now become acquainted with American medical charges, too expensive. I think I might have tried it, but after I saw that girl's face I knew my approach would be through her. She was about my own age; she was pretty, probably a student like me and, quite black, was me in negative. It was a symmetry I enjoyed. While I thought about this I fancied that the shadow I cast in that late summer reverie was like this girl, dark and altering in rippling angles as I walked on uneven ground, a foreshortened reflection of my own personality, changeable and intriguing, joined at my foot sole.

I did what the solitary person or the lonely lover often does. He knows that it is morbid to sit in his room and chew on his misery; he goes out and, at the slightest suggestion, he follows women, marking them in buses or in stores and then trailing after them, keeping at a safe undetectable distance and relentlessly keeping them in sight, so that their resolution - those quick woman's steps -becomes this, promising fulfillment. Women march more hectically than men and as they approach their destination they become positively frantic because women do not watch their feet or swing their arms, and when they speed up they acquire a mechanical bustle, and nearly always their calves stand out in smooth oblongs and the backs of their ankles become hard and pinched. A foreigner in a city watches other people; he tries to imitate their rhythm so he

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studies their movements. The reason I assigned for the women's speeding up was that unlike men they never glanced around as they walked and I decided that this provoked uneasiness and, consequently, a nervous speed.

So it was with this dark girl. She attended a school of fine arts that was housed in an old building on Marlborough Street; I had followed her to the place and later wrote a letter asking whether I might do a part-time course with them. The fees were out of the question. I continued to follow the girl to other likely spots. She used the Boston Public Library twice a week, the section devoted to Oriental art. I applied for a borrower's card and began studying there myself twice a week at the little tables adjacent to the ones she used. When she entered a stack, I entered a parallel one and, pretending to read, peered at her back. One day I saw her take a book; the subject was Indian miniatures of the Mogul period. She used it for the afternoon. I stayed at my desk, watching. After she was gone I looked on the shelf and saw that it was not there. She had checked it out.

A month later, on a day when normally she did not use the library, I looked for the book. It was not on the shelf. I looked it up in the card catalogue and noted down the author's name, and then I requested it at the main desk. The white-haired lady there wore spectacles hung on a chain around her neck. I showed her the card and asked when the book was due to be returned. Spectacles were put on, drawers pulled out, index cards flipped and thumbed. The book had not been borrowed, said the lady, and was I absolutely sure it was not on the shelf ? She repeated the call number. I said no. She said, rising, that it may have been put on another shelf.

We searched; she for a long time, I for only a few minutes. I knew then the book had been stolen.

And I knew the thief! A discovery! I had found her laughing and recorded her way of walking; I knew her subject and her school and many of her habits. These were obvious things. Now I had discovered a weakness, a deep secret. Many husbands would have trouble discovering this in their wives, but I was more patient than any husband, and more persistent than most lovers. I fantasized the kind of device necessary for such a theft: a sling, a pocket hung between her thighs on straps attached to a belt, the whole business

SINNING WITH ANNIE

hidden by her long skirt. (I knew her complete wardrobe and the ways she varied it, though once she surprised me with a new silk scarf.)

Her long skirts were out of fashion, but her face was so pretty that in clothes cut the wrong length, and so plain and featureless, she seemed to be anticipating a bold fashion. Her face was the same shade as her arms, deeply colored, with a high dark polish, the gloss of the race, a prominent nose balanced above by a strong forehead and brow, and below by full brown lips. She was Bengali, there was no doubt of that; the face, the thick black hair told it, the warm melancholy of her large eyes, the thin arms and sharp elbows, the long fingers, busy with mischief and pencils, nacreous fingernails, her air of independence, walking so swiftly, her responsible innocence concealing her crime.

I had followed her for months, through Boston streets, in department stores, stood with my back to her and watched her reflection in the window of a travel agency as she walked like a ghost through the sign Puerto Rico $49, as she browsed among the sidewalk bins of a secondhand bookshop. Her movements were unchanging: I could meet her bus, join her discreetly at the Hayes-Bickford for a coffee or follow her blindly, streets away, walking parallel on Boylston as she walked on Commonwealth Avenue, and I knew precisely when I could turn and allow our paths to cross. I was daring in the Main Reading Room of the library, sitting across the varnished table from her, memorizing her hands, for the lamps at eye level prevented her from seeing me. I kept maps of her movements; I could meet her head-on; I passed by her school and rehearsed conversations with her, and during her school's winter break, when her movements became slightly irregular (no school, more stores and library) I was half in love with her.

Her name was Dorothy Chowdree. I learned that early in December in the ridiculously painstaking way I had found out that she stole the book on Indian miniatures (and two others, also about Indian art). Now borrowing is done with numbers, but at that time the borrower wrote his name on two cards that were kept in a brown pocket glued to the inside back cover of the book; these cards were handed over when the book was taken out. I noted one book she had taken; it was returned on the date due; it bore her name. Simple. 1 noticed one other thing from my watching slot in

A LOVE KNOT

Middle Eastern Art: there was a book she always used but never took out. It wasn't possible for her to steal this one; it was very large, with color plates, bound in full calf. Its subject was Indian ornaments and jewelry.

For several weeks in March I neither followed her nor used the library, and toward the beginning of April I picked up again and found her exactly where I knew she would be, at 4:30 on a Friday, walking away from her school to a cup of coffee at the Hayes-Bickford and then a two-hour session in the Oriental collection. I saw her disappear around the corner; I lingered at the school and then went in. Some students, long-haired girls with green book bags and bulging portfolios were clomping down a wooden, spiral staircase. They paused at a bulletin board, read, and passed by me. I had a look at the bulletin board myself: a tea was announced (Tourer, B. Yardley'), a lecture at a museum, a summer school in Vermont. Dorothy's name was given twice, as organizer of a dance at the Biltmore for the Spring Weekend ('Single, $3.50') and as chairman of a lecture on Mondrian. The lecture was in a week's time, the dance in mid-May. Savoring the pure pleasure of expectation, I decided on the dance.

The weather grew mild; it still rained often, but the rain did not dry so quickly on the streets as it had done in the winter freeze. Streets, grass and sidewalks stayed wet, and in the early evenings and at night there were reflections on Walnut Street, reminding me of my first day, when I discovered that house and Dorothy's face in the lighted window. I was less patient now, for I had decided that Dorothy's industry at the library must mean that she was in her last year at the school. It would not be easy to trace her after her graduation. All my energies went into planning for the dance. I ferreted out a student from my college who knew where tickets could be bought for the Spring Weekend dance at the Biltmore. I borrowed money, bought a dark suit and a new tie and had my shoes resoled. Dorothy was also preparing for the dance: she bought shoes and yards and yards of silk from an importer just off Washington Street.

A week before the dance I entered the library early and went to the Oriental section. Dorothy had not arrived. I found the large leather volume on Indian ornaments and slipped an envelope inside. It was a new envelope, addressed to Dorothy; inside was my mother's love knot. I replaced the book on the shelf and took my

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usual place at Middle Eastern Art. I could see a tweed coat moving slowly through Dorothy's stack, fingering the spines. A man's ringed hand took a book from the shelf, opened it to the flyleaf, put it back. He then sidled toward the Indian ornaments book and, just as quickly, stepped away. Dorothy was beside him, her shoes clicking, heaving the book down.

American bars are the darkest places imaginable. In the Biltmore bar I had a whiskey and watched the students, dressed for the dance, walking past the window of the bar into the hotel lobby. I counted them so as to be sure that the ballroom would be full when I arrived, and when I had thirty-two couples I followed. Dorothy had not passed the bar, but I knew that as organizer she must have arrived early. I saw her as soon as I entered the ballroom; she was not hard to miss.

She was wearing a sari, blue with a gold border and not the shoes I had seen her buy but small embroidered slippers with curling toes. Her dress was correct, the sort that might be worn for an Indian festival or a wedding. She wore bangles on both wrists and one on her left ankle and when I saw her she was deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman whom I took to be the president of her school; he was bearded and wore a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. I remained in a corner, near a palm, an intruder, and I saw, as I expected, that Dorothy was wearing the love knot on a chain around her neck. I squinted and made out a neatly painted caste mark on her forehead, vermilion.

I do not know how to dance, and although I had prepared for the dance by deviously getting the ticket and borrowing money for my clothes, I should have included a few dancing lessons, for I knew that I was going to talk to Dorothy this evening. The conversation I had practiced I imagined taking place as we were twirling around the room. But the band was playing loudly and I could see from the couples already on the floor that this dance step was beyond me. Half a dozen songs and an hour later I decided that unless the lights were lowered and the band was playing more slowly my plans would be ruined. A bad dancer can fake it if the music is slow and no one is watching. I went out of the ballroom and found a man in overalls and genially bribed him to dim the lights.

The first slow number was 'Blue Moon.' Dorothy danced with the elderly bearded gentleman. So she was a bad dancer, too! As

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she moved around the floor I edged over to where she had been standing; the music ended. There was clapping. She walked toward me. I smiled at her, an over-rehearsed grin that was nearly wild, but she returned it. I had to speak to her now.

I did so, but to this day I have no idea what happened to my tongue. I often think of this - I think of it as much as I do her face - and I still cannot understand it; there seems no explanation. I opened my mouth; my sentence was 'I've been admiring your sari all evening,' but I spoke it not in English but in Bengali.

Her eyes widened. I blushed and stared at the love knot, and I saw it as I had once done, in my hands in my mother's room in Calcutta.

'You speak Hindi,' said Dorothy. An American accent in that beautiful Bengali mouth.

'No,' I said in Bengali, and then, 'No, not Hindi,' I said in English, with my Indian accent. I was not doing well.

She wrinkled her nose.

'I have been admiring your sari all evening,' I said, almost in panic. 'But when I saw your jewel - it is a Bengali jewel, is it not? - I felt I had to speak in Bengali.'

'Where did you learn it?' she asked, eager.

'A few lessons . . . private teacher . . .'

'Can you give me his name? I'm trying to learn-'

'He died,' I said, and she made me regret my lie.

'Oh, I'm awfully sorry,' she said, her face going sad.

'A long time ago,' I added, and hearing 'These Foolish Things' asked her to dance. My head was swimming.

She placed her hand on my shoulder; I embraced her and we were off, intimate as lovers. She said, 'Some idiot put practically all the lights off. You can't see your hand in front of your face.'

It was true. Perhaps I had given the man in overalls too much money. I said, 'Oh, but I can see you wery veil.'

She was humming the song in my ear.

'You must have lived in the States for a long time to pick up such a strong American accent. Not so?'

'I was born here,' said Dorothy. 'But my father was born in India, in Calcutta.'

'Imagine that,' I said. 'And your mother?'

'Indian, too. But born in England. Kinda complicated, huh?'

'They met here?'

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'In England,' she said, 'where my father was studying.'