THE IMMIGRANT (20 page)

They were walking fast. Clouds had suddenly darkened the sky. ‘Unpredictable weather,’ said Ananda with relish, ‘But I think we’ll make it home before it rains’.

They neared Hollin Court and the wind briskly froze Nina’s ears. She shivered as goosebumps appeared on her skin. ‘Tunnel effect,’ said Ananda pointing to two big buildings, a school and an apartment block on either side of the road.

Nina was not interested. Her thoughts centred around her warm home and a cup of hot tea, while her husband’s darted obsessively back to the party, worrying, assessing.

‘Here I’m thought of as a cultured man, as Canadian as everybody else. So I don’t want folks to get the wrong impression.’

‘What impression?’

‘That you are a traditional, backward Indian girl, like some of these women you see at the India Club. Can’t even speak English properly.’

‘How can you live here and not speak English properly?’

‘Some immigrant types straight from the village—they speak English, sure, but would rather not.’

‘They couldn’t possibly have thought I am like that.’

‘I know, I know. I’m just warning you. Especially, you know, since we married the way we did.’

Nina now understood the cause of his anxiety. People here probably had very archaic notions about arranged marriages. As Ananda strode along, shoulders straight against the cold Canadian breeze, Nina glanced at his smooth brown skin, his jet black hair, the emphatically Indian eyes, the unmistakeable Indian features, the Indian accent that lurked behind the Western.

‘Since we aren’t from here, your friends must make allowances. Besides, beyond a point, how does it matter what they think?’

The husband was silent, and the wife realised, of course it mattered what people thought. They were the ones among whom he, and now she, intended to pass their lives, and it was important they be understood for what they were, rather than be judged by stereotypical ideas.

She took her husband’s hand, and swung it in her own. He had had such a hard time after his parents died, she was certainly not going to question the edifice he had built.

He looked at her and smiled. Several people at the party had told him how good looking his wife was, her dark complexion was so striking. He mentioned this.

She grunted. It still felt strange hearing the word dark applied to her, in India she was among the ones with a prized fair complexion.

‘They liked you, I could tell,’ said Ananda, squeezing her hand. ‘You’ll have no problem making friends here.’

‘I miss Zenobia.’

‘Well, it’s easy enough to find others to take her place.’

‘It takes time, I suppose.’

‘These people are initially reserved, not like Americans, who start washing their dirty linen the moment they say hello.’

‘Really? They seemed very friendly.’

‘You are my wife, that’s why they accepted you immediately.’ Yes, they had, now that she thought about it. It hadn’t been like that strange awkward lunch at Uncle Sharma’s, with Nancy showing no special interest in her and saying all those things about Ananda. No, this afternoon had certainly not been like that evening.

Once home, Ananda gratified his wife by insisting they make love immediately. Maybe this time you’ll get pregnant, he whispered, though he did not last long enough for such hopes to persist.

Still, thought Ananda, sexually he was doing better than before, even without the anaesthetic he sprayed on his penis to delay his climax. He felt uneasy about using it too frequently; it was meant for teeth after all, not for tender female depths. And although Nina had not complained, except to remark on the smell, his own sensations were unpleasantly affected.

He knew he still had miles to go before he reached his goal of pounding some woman to sexual pulp, but with marriage, he had gained confidence. One day he might try again with a white woman. He loved his wife, but he didn’t want to feel that she was the only one in the world he could have sex with. What kind of man would that make him, with his masculinity so limited? His lack of control rendered him very vulnerable, the anxiety of it grew cancerously inside him. Every female patient lying in his chair with her mouth open, giving herself trustingly to him, made him imagine an alternate sexual scenario. Her attractiveness, her responses, were immaterial; his sole concern was, could he do it? At these moments his touch became tender, his voice lower as he assured her she would feel no pain, the injection would only take a second.

He was a doctor, bound by professional codes, and his fantasies sometimes disturbed him.

At least he was lucky in his wife, a good woman, never saying anything to make him feel bad. As he came out of the bathroom, full of ungratified needs and sexual resolve, she smiled at him and asked whether he would like some tea. He could hear her hum in the kitchen as he put on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, one of his favourites.

vi

As immigrants fly across oceans they shed their old clothing, because clothes maketh the man and new ones help ease the transition. Men’s clothing has less international variation; the change is not so drastic. But those women who are not used to wearing Western clothes find themselves in a dilemma. If they focus on integration, convenience and conformity they have to sacrifice habit, style and self-perception. The choice is hard, and in Nina’s case it took months to wear down her resistance.

Looking after her Indian clothes was time consuming and exhausting. Everything had to be washed by hand, then hung on hangers from the shower curtain rod to dry, then the ironing board had to be hauled from the closet so the clothes could be ironed meticulously. And ironed again whenever she wore them, for this fabric crumpled easily.

In Brussels her mother had worn saris everywhere, thick Kanjeevarams even in the snow, underneath her winter overcoat. Lovely, lovely, had been the unanimous response. But to go with all this, she had imported Indian domestic help

Nina’s clothes demanded the local dhobi, the corner presswallah, not washing machines. So when Ananda declared enough was enough, she had to graduate to Western, she acquiesced.

He hadn’t thought his wife would need so much prodding. Once dressed in a certain way, it would be easy for her to blend in; she was lighter in colour than he was, her origins not so obvious. In her silks (praised at the party as exotic and dazzling) she was too much of an exhibit.

The weather helped him win his argument. Although in the summer she was quite comfortable in her salwar kameez, as it grew colder, the wind dug sharply into her silk clad legs, the damp ground made the hems of her salwar dirty, while constant scrubbing left the edges ragged. She couldn’t live in such clothes for the rest of her life, she knew that.

To the Halifax Shopping Centre then, to those giants in standard clothing, Eaton’s and Simpsons, that flanked either end of the mall. Ananda’s patriotism meant that he preferred Eaton’s, the all-Canadian store, to the offshoot of Simpson-Sears, USA.

Once there he hunted out a salesgirl while Nina surveyed the racks in the woman’s section. Blue, black, grey, brown, white, these were the dominant colours.

The salesgirl’s X-ray vision looked through the kindly, concealing salwar kameez to the awkward body beneath and asked, ‘What would you like? A skirt? A dress? Tops? Slacks? Jeans?’

Nina disguised her apprehension with a look of deep thoughtfulness that she hoped could be interpreted as Eastern mysticism. ‘Pants?’ she said, her voice disengaged and distant.

‘Jeans,’ clarified the husband.

‘Try these for size.’

The stiff blue material pinched her waist and hurt her crotch. She tried squatting in them; the discomfort grew. Looser, I want looser. In a larger size, she could slip a hand in the waistband, but still the material felt hard and stiff against her skin. Her bra stuck out in points under the knit material of the accompanying shirt, her belly bulged visibly against the material. She looked so awful she could not bear it. Averting her head from the mirror, she stepped outside the trial room.

‘That looks nice,’ said Ananda enthusiastically.

‘I feel uncomfortable.’

‘They’ll feel better after a couple of washes,’ said the salesgirl.

The jeans were agreed upon. So were two dark baggy shirts. For the first time in her adult life Nina was wearing assembly line clothing.

It was a beginning, thought the husband. She did look ungainly, he had to admit. Despite her foreign service background, his wife was quite traditional. He smiled at her. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said, and she said that if she looked nice to him that was all that mattered. He put his arm around her and thought again what a good woman his wife was.

Nina has new clothes. She is going to the library and on the way she will check the number of covert glances she is able to dis-attract. As she walks the familiar roads her gaze flickers here and there, but her surroundings respond with indifference. She could be any jean clad woman with a colour co-ordinated blue shirt. There is comfort in this anonymity. She strolls through the public gardens, stops and stares at the ducks. They swim in the waters with an air of belonging, regally swallowing the bread people throw at them. They are there to be admired, and they do their job well.

As she hangs over the railing, a young man sidles towards her. ‘Nice, aren’t they?’

She nods uncertainly.

‘Where are you from?’

It is broad daylight in a public place. ‘Guess,’ she says, in her accentless English.

‘Italy?’

She nods.

‘Wanna have a coffee?’

Alarmed, she ceases to be an adventuress from Italy and subsides into a housewife from India. Quickly she leaves the park.

In all the time of wearing salwar kameez no one had accosted her. Now in jeans, she is accessible to the whole city. She looks down at her clothes with some friendliness. Maybe in time she will get used to her belly jutting out (it hadn’t stopped a man from addressing her), get used to thick stiff material between her legs.

The Candy Bowl arrives. She nips in and spends 14.95. It is just as well men do not accost her every day.

The library, and our newly clad Nina disappears inside it. Assimilation brings approval, and the checkout counter woman assures her she looks wonderful.

Autumn came. Sue phoned. ‘Nina? Would you like to go to the Halifax Shopping Centre to look for your coat and boots? I promised Andy I would do this, and I’m sorry, I just haven’t had the time.’

Nina hastened to convince Sue that she had not felt neglected.

‘Afterwards I thought we could visit the Atlantic Winter Fair?’ Sue went on with her upward lilt. ‘The children love it. We could go directly from there. The fall colours on that road are really nice.’

‘Won’t the children get bored buying a coat?’

‘It shouldn’t take too long—and you’ll get to see a bit of our Nova Scotian culture as well.’

‘I’d love that.’

‘Fine. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.’

Nina used that time to experiment with her clothes. The jeans and shirt of course, but she tried her shawls in various draping combinations so that she seemed more herself in the mirror. Finally she decided that a red shawl in folds till her waist and Ananda’s grey all purpose coat made her look quite attractive. Would Sue think so too?

Sue did. ‘My, you look nice. What a lovely stole, it complements your skin, we sit for hours to get a tan like that.’ But Nina is not interested in fairness or darkness; they have their standards, she has hers and never the twain shall meet. She wants information.

Last night, perhaps in consonance with her new look, Ananda had asked Nina to call him Andy. She had refused. It was foreign, Christian, Western, and to use the word Andy in her own home would be to carry alienation into the bedroom. Ananda had not persisted, but the very fact that he had asked suggested desires she found disturbing.

‘Sue. Can you say Ananda?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Andy. His name is Ananda.’

‘I did realise you were calling him something different at the party, but I thought that was a pet name.’

‘No, no, it’s his actual name. Andy is not a Hindu name.’

‘Well, fancy that. He always said call me Andy.’

There was a subtle distinction between
call me Andy
and
my name is Andy,
which Sue was perhaps not in a position to appreciate. To sensitise her, Nina briefly described Ananda’s efforts to assimilate.

The granddaughter of immigrants, Sue was completely understanding. ‘My grandfather changed his name from Dmitri to Jimmy. His last name from Philippoussis to Phillip.’

‘Jimmy doesn’t even sound like Dmitri,’ objected Nina.

‘He wanted a total change. My grandfather didn’t do things by halves.’

‘Didn’t your grandmother mind? She must have been used to Greek names.’

‘I think she felt the same way. They were very poor. They met on the boat they came out on, and married soon after they landed. They were grateful to this country, they thought of it as their home before they had even seen it.’

‘What about their identity?’

‘Oh, they had the one they wanted. Canadian. They made every effort to mingle as fast as possible. Even though their English was limited, they didn’t insist their children learn Greek. Then my mother married a Scottish Canadian, and I married someone of Polish origin. End of Greece.’

Dmitri—Jimmy, Ananda—Andy. If you looked at it from this end it made sense. New beginnings, new names. Didn’t Hindu families change the bride’s name if they felt like it? Hello Canada, we are married. Now change my name.

What about colour? Dmitri could call himself Jimmy and get away with it, his skin was a shade of white. What assimilation when your body stamped you an outsider?

Never, for a moment, in all her years at home, had she to think about who or what she was. She had belonged. Only now was she beginning to realise how much that meant.

In the back seat John kept up a steady chant: horsy, horsy, horsy, horsy ride horsy.

‘Yes dear, you’ll ride a pony once we get there.’

‘Ride horsy, ride horsy,’ repeated John insistently.