THE IMMIGRANT (13 page)

He disappeared to order drinks and snacks. She floated on her back and took in the many stories of the hotel towering over her, indulging in the fantasy of being mistress of her future, her life, her happiness.

The entire family was coming for dinner. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ said Ananda as, following Alka’s suggestion, he booked a table at the plush French restaurant on the ground floor.

Mr Batra came early. She sat in the lobby, looking around her, glorying in the fact that her daughter was a resident in this great five star hotel. This was where NRIs stayed, where the Sharmas had stayed till yesterday. Now they were in the Lake Palace in Udaipur, spending more dollars on local colour and luxury. The Gellers were trekking in Nepal. So strange that the foreigners should be doing things more cheaply.

Patiently she watched the lobby clocks tick past the appointed time. Her daughter would be in the arms of her husband and she didn’t want to disturb them. When she was just married how many hours they had spent in bed! Nina should make the most of every minute with Ananda. He was such a nice boy.

The Alka unit arrived. ‘Arre Aunty, what are you doing, sitting here all alone?’

‘Waiting for you,’ smiled Mr Batra.

‘Where are Nina and Ananda?’

‘They should be coming.’

Really, Nina’s mother was impossible, she couldn’t do anything on her own. The bride and groom were summoned downstairs. Together they walked into the plush Cote D’Azur, to be seated by a great wall of glass that overlooked a garden artfully highlighted by hidden lamps.

Mr Batra nervously scanned the menu, unable to order at these prices, even at someone else’s expense. Her spending impulse had withered through years of very mild usage.

Ananda scrutinized the wine list, seemingly unfazed by the astronomical charges, while Nina reminded herself of the patients who would take care of everything.

Conversation darted towards Halifax, and the value of relatives there. Not to mention friends, friends who had proved that water can be as thick as blood when it came to journeying to India for a wedding.

Alka observed that if they got their posting abroad, it would be nice for Nina to have family nearby. The children would miss their new aunt.

Ananda said things were pretty grim in India, it would be good if they got their posting, but why was it taking so long? Hadn’t it been imminent last time?

Ramesh said Alka was too innocent to understand the workings of the government. Postings abroad could take years. Besides, Ananda might or might not know, but the leaders were doing their best to put India on the fast track to success. The people who maligned them, especially the foreign presses, did not understand how the Indian system worked. Democracy had proved a waste of time. India needed icons, they needed a strong hand. Look at what China had managed to do with a firm power base.

Nina fell silent as she took cold butter curls from the chilled silver dish and carefully put them on her bread roll. Ramesh was so pompous and stupid, just because he and The Son had been in school together did this mean he could misrepresent every fact? She hoped they never got their posting.

‘Don’t look sad,’ said Alka, noticing her downcast expression.

‘I’m worried about my mother,’ said Nina quickly. ‘I am all she has.’

‘You’ll be in touch.’

‘It’s difficult without a phone.’

‘Ah yes, it does take long to get a phone. Have you applied?’

‘Three years ago.’

Ramesh was listening. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look into it.’

Her irritation could not continue under this show of concern. A phone would make her mother less isolated. What could she do but accept the offer, and smile—though the smile stuck in her throat? And later on when Ananda said appreciatively, ‘That was nice of Ramesh. You didn’t even ask,’ what could she do but agree?

The second night.

She spent a long time in the bathroom. Was she looking alluring enough? The nightdress she was contemplating so earnestly was a white thin-strapped affair, with little eyelets worked into the diaphanous fabric and a narrow pink satin ribbon at the neckline. She had bought it with Zenobia at Connaught Place. At the thought of her friend an unsought tear explored her cheek before being mopped up with a piece of hotel tissue.

When she came out of the bathroom she saw Ananda was asleep. She clattered around noisily, drinking water, putting off the lamp: no result. She snuggled next to him, shook him a little: still no result, only the faint sound of his snoring.

Should she wake him up? No, her poor husband must still be jet-lagged, and hadn’t he mentioned working hard and sleeping little before his departure? He had only been in India five days. Besides her own needs, she had to think of another person’s as well.

She wished she had packed books for her honeymoon. Reading was her usual soporific. She tossed and turned, tossed and turned, getting more and more agitated, the white eyelet nightie mocking her all the while. Eventually she fell asleep, sighing into her pillow, marvelling at the man whom no amount of tossing and turning could wake.

The next morning Ananda redeemed his husband status by jumping on her before she was fully awake. True, the penetration was over even more quickly than the day before, but Ananda tried to make up for it in other ways. Afterwards he looked at her adoringly.

‘All these years I’ve been so lonely.’

She pushed her hands though his thick soft hair, ‘No longer.’

‘No longer,’ he murmured back.

She loved her husband, she did. And she didn’t feel the slight itchiness in her vagina that she did yesterday. Maybe her body cavities had to get used to his emissions, she thought as she made her way to the bathroom.

Alone, in the plush bathroom of the Oberoi, she absorbed the soft white towels, the little soaps, shampoo and lotions, the running hot water, oceans of it, so different from the mingy bathwater she heated in tin containers at home.

Her husband was giving her the best of everything. Was she going to be so unreasonable as to demand penetrative orgasms as well? Thus her thoughts as she jumped into the shower. Her husband followed her and drew the curtain back to tenderly stare at her as she soaped herself, then he watched her some more as she tied the pleats of her sari. As she gave a final tug to the hem he put his arms around her and crushed the careful folds of her palla.

Her own arms bent around him, she gazed into his face, her heart creeping towards her eyes. ‘Love me,’ she said.

He laughed and pinched her cheek, ‘I already do.’

That night dinner with Zenobia. Nina felt nervous about the occasion. Would they get along? The glue of blood would not work here, just the glue of friendship, where different pressures worked upon the joints.

Zenobia was taken to the Chinese restaurant on the rooftop. ‘You can’t take her to a very expensive place—she won’t like it—it will seem like showing off, and don’t order imported wine—it’s too expensive,’ cautioned Nina beforehand.

Husband and friend were both civil to each other. Zenobia plied him with questions about dentistry, but he withheld a similar enthusiasm about her life. Nina felt embarrassed. Why couldn’t he at least return the compliment of interest? But it did not occur to him, instead he looked complacent. Dinner over, and I have to go, said Zenobia, bye, phone me when you can to the wife, nice meeting you to the husband. It had been the shortest dinner Nina had ever had with her friend.

Meanwhile, their interview at the Canadian embassy. They went with the wedding invitation, wedding photographs, evidence of the year long correspondence, and the marriage certificate that the registrar had given them.

They waited in the lobby. Nina was nervous. Suppose they denied her a visa?

‘Of course you will get a visa. I am a citizen, they cannot deny my wife entry,’ said Ananda, flipping through her old passport. ‘You can speak to them in French if you like.’

‘Heavens! My French is not good enough. Is it necessary?’ Nina had noticed the two languages all over the embassy compound.

‘Not necessary. But sure to help.’

They waited silently along with others. Through the glass they could see a big white courtyard with fountains playing in small blue-painted pools. One woman was reading on a bench, under a small tree. No other people. Nina wondered what the rest of the building was like. It was so massive.

A man descended. ‘Sharma?’ he asked.

Ananda stood up.

The man joined them. He had their papers in his hand. Letters, certificates, pictures, everything that established them as bona fide.

‘So, you are applying for an immigrant visa?’

Nina nodded.

‘How long have you been married?’

‘Two days.’

The man looked up briefly, his gaze arrested by the bangles on Nina’s hands. Ananda rustled his papers. ‘I am a Canadian citizen. I have known my wife for a while. As you can see from my visa entries, this is my second visit in a year.’

The passports were examined closely. Nina thought she had never seen a man with so little colour in his face. His hair was a kind of grey-brown-blond, his eyebrows and eyelashes similarly lifeless.

‘There seems no problem,’ he finally said.

Husband and wife breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Shouldn’t take more than three months.’

‘Three months!’ exclaimed Nina.

‘We were actually hoping that my wife would be able to accompany me,’ said Ananda.

‘We have to proceed strictly in order of application. There are plenty of others before you.’

‘Is there no way?’

‘I’m sorry. Those are the rules.’ He got up to leave. They watched his retreating back, solid, unapproachable, impermeable to pleas or bribes. The door buzzed; it was for them, they had to go.

They were silent as they walked out onto the spacious driveway. Past the round of green lawn with a fountain playing in the middle. The chowkidar came out of his little cabin and lifted the bar that lay across the gate.

‘Never mind,’ said Ananda holding her hand, ‘three months will pass quickly. I’ll phone you often.’

‘Yes, it’s not so bad. Didi had said it might take two–three years.’

Ananda snorted. ‘That’s in the US.’

Back in the hotel. Didi phoned. Nina sat on the bed and listened. Ananda was getting angry. This was not your India, where bribes and connections worked. He didn’t want to take her into the country under false pretences, otherwise of course she could have got a tourist visa.

A silence in which Nina could hear Alka’s voice, faint, quick, excited.

He put the phone down. She sidled up to him, put her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘What was Didi saying?’

‘She thinks one can’t move two steps without her husband’s help. If he interferes, a perfectly straightforward case will take ten times longer. Things don’t work on pull in Canada, why can’t she understand that?’

The bride rubbed her cheek against her husband’s shoulder. They were not going to leave together. She would return to Jangpura after the Oberoi Hotel, to Miranda House after the winter break.

‘Are you disappointed?’ she asked.

‘I thought this might happen.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You thought everything would fall into your lap?’

The sharpness surprised her. She drew back. ‘You did say that as a citizen you were entitled to marry whom you liked.’

‘Of course I am. But that doesn’t mean papers are granted in one day. Three months is nothing.’ Hadn’t she already agreed to that? Nina had not realised the adjustment process her mother had spoken of so long and so lovingly would begin the moment she married. She put her arms around her husband. ‘The main thing is that we enjoy our honeymoon. I can certainly wait as long as required.’

‘I shall count every minute till you come,’ said Ananda gallantly.

He recovered his old tone, and she recovered hers by laughing.

That evening the family dropped by. They congregated in the coffee shop to discuss this new development. Arguments flew thick and fast. Ramesh wanted to use his contacts. Ananda was positive this would backfire, Alka implied they didn’t know the extent of Ramesh’s contacts.

The married couple thought secretly, what was the rush? In an unseemly fashion both were immediately aware of the advantages of staying apart. In their thirties, the single life was what they were used to, and now for a while longer they could contemplate in solitude the adjustments that accompany any marriage.

‘We’ll come to take you to the airport tomorrow night,’ said Ramesh in the lobby. ‘Then Nina will stay with us?’

Fortunately Nina had a mother, whom she pleaded as an excuse. Alka looked arch and said they would not accept her absence for long.

The third night. Ananda’s flight was at three in the morning, he had to get to the airport by twelve. Nina’s mother was coming to the hotel, and so were Alka and Ramesh, coming to escort Ananda to the airport, to escort the new wife back to B-26 Jangpura Extension.

ix

Nina returned to Miranda House a married woman. On the surface everything was the same: address, students, classes, bus routine, masses of corrections, department meetings, third term anxiety about exams. She never anticipated though the respect that came with marriage, a tiny shift in focus, and there it was; Nina Sharma, an accepted member of society, married, bound for the Western big time. The clerical staff demanded sweets, Kalawati accused her of forgetting her in her happiness and the Principal congratulated her.

As far as Zenobia was concerned the intensity of the friendship ebbed and flowed in a pattern initiated by that first announcement of Ananda’s arrival in Mr Seth’s canteen. Nina was married, she was waiting for an immigrant visa, she was going away. These were the lines that divided them, their friendship could not stand the weight of so many new beginnings.

Ananda phoned two or three times a week. Nina had to force herself to be nice to Mr Singh for their conversations were long. They already had a past to share, the wedding, the stay at the Oberoi, Gary, the uncle, who asked about her all the time. Nina in turn related news of Alka’s family, of her mother, of college. Truly marriage was a fine thing. No detail was too small to be conveyed.