"One Amazing Thing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee)

6

Uma lay on a row of three chairs, using her backpack as a pillow. A sharp edge from inside the pack poked her neck; she suspected it to be her Chaucer. The pain was on ts way back-she could feel its early forays in her bones. She shivered. The heating system had been broken for-was it thirty-six hours now? The room had grown very cold, and it didn’t help that water had seeped into her shoes.

She longed to remember something beautiful and warm, and what came to her was a summer walk she had taken in the hills with Ramon. But before she could recollect anything more than a sloping trail of slippery orange gravel and a wicker basket filled with picnic supplies, a commotion rose in the room.

She heard voices raised in protest and the unmistakable sound of a slap. Had they gone mad? Didn’t they remember their precarious situation? Lily ran past her. In the shaky ray of the flashlight, which Cameron had turned toward the quarrel, she saw Mangalam fling the teenager to the ground with a thwack and Tariq launch himself at Mangalam. Plaster drizzled from the broken ceiling in protest, and her throat constricted with terror. But consumed by their passions, the two men were oblivious of the danger in which they placed the entire company.

When Cameron hurried toward the melee, Uma followed. She was worried about him: after digging Tariq out, he had coughed until he was forced to use his inhaler again. She also realized that she had forgotten to warn Cameron of Tariq’s threat.

I’m going to kill him.

It was as she feared. When Cameron tried to pry Tariq’s hands from Mangalam’s throat, Tariq punched him hard. Blood gushed from Cameron’s nose. Malathi was sobbing, pulling at Tariq’s hair. Tariq swatted her away. For some reason, Cameron wouldn’t hit Tariq back (Uma was sure he could have knocked him out again) but tried to grab his arms. Tariq’s eyes were crazed. He butted Cameron hard with his head and Cameron reeled back, gasping. It was like their very own Lord of the Flies! Uma couldn’t let it go on. She jumped into the fray, though she was terribly afraid for her broken arm, and caught Tariq’s shoulder. He turned, swinging, before he saw who it was. His fist hit her upper arm-her good arm, thank God. Still, she fell with a cry of pain. Perhaps that fall did some good because Tariq was startled into lowering his fists long enough for Cameron and Mr. Pritchett to catch him by the arms. He lunged at them, his mouth a snarl. But Lily added her efforts to the men’s, whispering fiercely into Tariq’s ear words that no one else could decipher, until he went limp and allowed her to lead him away.

THEY WERE SITTING CLOSE TOGETHER (CAMERON HAD INSISTED on it), trading distrustful glances in the half-dark. The larger flashlight had fallen to the ground. Cameron let it lie there. He was wheezing. He wiped his nose on his shirt, but the blood kept coming. This propelled Uma to stand up. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, only that she needed to say something. For a moment her heart pounded. She had never liked speaking in front of a crowd. Even the lectures she had to give as a teaching assistant, with carefully prepared notes and jokes she had practiced in the bathroom mirror, had made her nervous. Then an ironic calm descended on her. Only a few things mattered when you were about to die, and what people thought of your speaking abilities was not one of them.

“Folks,” she began, “we’re in a bad situation. It looks like the earthquake was a serious one. We don’t know how long we’ll be stuck here. I’m scared, and I guess you are, too.”

She could see that no one wanted to listen. Mrs. Pritchett turned her face away. Mangalam was busy massaging his neck. Tariq had shut his eyes again. Malathi worried the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Lily, who was stuffing Cameron’s nostrils with clumps of Kleenex, scowled at her.

But she had to go on. “Unless we’re careful, things will get a lot worse. We can take out our stress on one another-like what just happened-and maybe get buried alive. Or we can focus our minds on something compelling-”

“Like what?” Mr. Pritchett said. “It’s not like we have cable TV down here.”

Uma refused to let him annoy her. An idea was taking shape in her mind. With a little burst of excitement, because she sensed the power behind it, she said, “We can each tell an important story from our lives.”

Mr. Pritchett looked offended. “This is no time for games.”

Mangalam grunted in agreement. Malathi crossed stubborn arms over her chest.

“It’s not a game,” Uma said. She hugged her backpack, wanting to tell them how powerful stories could be. But they were staring at her as though she were half-witted.

“What if we don’t have a story to tell?” Mrs. Pritchett asked, sounding anxious.

“Everyone has a story,” said Uma, relieved that one of them was considering the idea. “I don’t believe anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.” A shiver came over her as she said the last words, a blurry déjà vu. Where had she heard the phrase before?

“You don’t know my life,” Mrs. Pritchett said.

“I’ve never told a story,” Mangalam announced flatly. His tone indicated that he wasn’t going to start now.

“It’s not difficult,” Uma said. “I’m sure you remember the stories your parents told you when you were little.” But at the mention of his parents, a shuttered look came over Mangalam’s face.

“I’m not good at explaining,” Malathi said. She looked unconvinced when Uma promised to help her find the right words.

“What if no one likes my story?” That was Lily.

Though Uma assured her they would love it, she shook her head and busied herself with rummaging in her backpack.

Tariq opened his eyes and glared at Uma. “Did you consider that we might not want everyone to know our business?” Before she could think of a rejoinder, he shut his eyes again.

One volunteer, Uma thought in desperation. That was all she needed. But even Cameron, whom she had counted on, was examining the lines on his palm.

Then she heard a voice, quavery, speaking English with a rusty Indian accent.

“I will be first.”

It was Jiang. They stared at her with varying degrees of incredulity.

“Gramma,” Lily began, “You can’t even speak English.”

Jiang blinked in the ray from the flashlight that Cameron had trained on her. Uma thought an impish expression flickered over her face. Had the old woman pretended, all these years, not to know the language of America?

Jiang said, “I am ready. I will tell my tale.”

THE RULES UMA SET DOWN WERE SIMPLE: NO INTERRUPTIONS, no questions, and no recriminations, especially by family members. Between stories, they would take breaks as needed.

They arranged the chairs into a circle. Malathi came out with a tin of Kool-Aid fruit punch. (Where had she hidden it? What else was she hiding?) She mixed it into the bowls of water sitting on the ounter, placed the bowls on a tray, and served them as though she were the hostess at a party. The sugar made people more cheerful, though Uma guessed it would ultimately make them feel worse. Oh, well! Carpe diem. Cameron switched off both flashlights. But in spite of the claustrophobic dark that fell on them, Uma sensed a new alertness in her companions, a shrugging off of things they couldn’t control. They were ready to listen to one another. No, they were ready to listen to the story, which is sometimes greater than the person who speaks it.

“WHEN I WAS A CHILD,” JIANG BEGAN, “I LIVED INSIDE A SECRET.”

From outside her house, in the narrow alley lined with the smelly gutters typical of Calcutta ’s Chinatown, an observer would have seen the ugly, square front of a building, windowless and muddy red like its neighbors. In the center of this façade was a low, narrow door of cheap wood, painted green. The door opened only a few times each day-for the children, who walked a few blocks to the Chinese Christian school, or for the father, who was picked up for work by the monthly taxi he shared with two other Chinese businessmen. Sometimes in the afternoon the grandmother might undertake a visit by rickshaw to her friends, all of whom lived within a mile of the house. Or a guest would arrive unexpectedly, causing a flurry of xcitement and a dispatching of the cook to the market for bean cakes or fresh lychees. Should the observer have peered into the interior of the house, he would have seen only another brick wall-the spirit wall, built for the express purpose of deflecting the outsider’s gaze.

“But no one ever looked,” Jiang said. “No one gave the Chinese any thought-not until much later. Indians considered us below them because many of us were in the tannery business or owned leathergoods stores. That was okay with us. We had our own people, and we got from them everything we needed.”

Had the observer walked through the door and around the spirit wall though, he would have been astonished. Inside was a large and beautiful courtyard, the heart around which the rest of the house was structured, its windows and balconies looking down benignly on mango trees and roses. At the courtyard’s center, a fountain rose and fell. Parties were held here on full moon nights, with much drinking of wine and reciting of poetry, while children played catch around the sculpted lions.

Jiang and her brother never spoke about the courtyard-or about the other parts of the house. The banquet hall with the carved rosewood table that could seat twenty-four people. Their father’s bedroom, which had a large photograph of their dead mother and was still hung with the silks she had chosen as a bride, embroidered with herons and good-luck koi. His study with the antique calligraphy scrolls he loved to collect. The hidden safe in which, because he didn’t quite trust the banks, he kept gold coins, their mother’s jade and pearl jewelry, stacks of rupees, and important documents (all except one, which he would later realize was the most important). There was no reason to tell the other Chinese of these things. They already knew, and many of the children’s friends’ houses mirrored theirs. And as for the non-Chinese-the ghosts, as they were called-the children were taught from the beginning to stay away from them. To keep family secrets safe.

“I would be the first in our family to break this taboo,” Jiang said.

IT IS AN EARLY SPRING DAY IN 1962 IN CALCUTTA AND JIANG, twenty-five years old, stands in the doorway of her father’s shoe store inside New Market, under the sign that reads feng’s fine footwear. She is proud of the sign, of which she is the author. That sign had led to some heated arguments, her grandmother claiming that such an arrogant declaration would attract bad luck. Look at the other Chinese businesses with their noncommittal nomenclatures: lucky orchid, jade mountain, flying dragon. None of them draw attention to their family name by blazoning it over their storefront. But her father had taken Jiang’s side, the way he had ever since her mother had died when Jiang was five, leading her grandmother to lament that he was nothing but a soggy noodle in his daughter’s hands.

Secretly, Jiang admits that her grandmother is right. And thank God for it, because otherwise Jiang would not be standing inside Feng’s, breathing in the smell of shoe leather, which is her favorite smell in all the world. She would be married off like her classmates, toting babies on her hip. Instead, she manages the family business, in which her older brother Vincent, a dentist with a spacious office off Dharmatala Street, has shown no interest. Though he is too loyal to the family to say such a thing, Jiang suspects that he looks down on shopkeeping.

And that is just fine with Jiang, who loves every aspect of her work. She opens the store each morning so her father, whose gouty leg has been bothering him, can sleep in. She decides which designs to order. She checks the quality of the work sent in by the shoemakers and ruthlessly sends back pieces that do not meet her stringent standards. She visits every convent school in Calcutta and speaks to the appropriate personages so that their students will be directed here to purchase uniform shoes. (The priests and nuns are happy to recommend Feng’s. The quality is excellent, and it doesn’t hurt that Feng’s provides the holy ones with free footwear.) She haggles ruthlessly with the men from the Chinese tanneries in Tangra, squatting over the leather samples they have brought in. She quells, with a single glance (as she is doing now) the two salesgirls who have a tendency to dissolve into giggles at the slightest cause.

The cause, this time, is a young man who is approaching the store. Jiang notes that he is taller than the average Indian and clean-shaven, unlike the usual scruffy Bengali male who operates under the delusion that beards are the emblems of intellectualism. His blue shirt is crisply ironed, but his sleeves are rolled up. This gives him a holidaying look that Jiang finds surprisingly attractive, perhaps because her father and brother, both formal men, would never do something like that. She decides to attend to him herself and dismisses the disappointed salesgirls with a flick of her wrist.

The man is accompanied by a wide-eyed girl of about fourteen, who clearly adores him. Jiang guesses her to be his younger sister. Just as they enter the store, he bends and whispers something funny in her ear-or is it that the girl finds everything he says funny? She bursts into laughter, then claps a self-conscious palm over her mouth. The man pulls it away. “Stop that, Meena!” he says. “It’s okay to laugh!”

Jiang is struck by his words. Has anyone in her family ever encouraged her to abandon herself to laughter? Even her father, who loves her dearly, is a cautious man. Letting her work in the store is probably the riskiest act he has undertaken in his life. And this is a temporary recklessness, because sooner or later Jiang’s grandmother will wear him down into setting up a match for Jiang. As for her brother-Jiang pictures him in his starched white shirt and face mask (to keep out germs and the ubiquitous fishy odor that he insists pervades Bengali mouths) as he bends gingerly toward a patient. A sigh escapes her and she feels a twinge of jealousy toward the girl. Then the businesswoman in her takes over. A caring brother such as this man, she thinks, would buy high-quality shoes for his sister rather than look for a bargain.

As she expects, they are here to buy uniform shoes. For Loreto House, which is the poshest of the convent schools in Calcutta. The girl moves to the foot measurement stool, but already Jiang has called out to the salesgirl to bring A-22 and 23, and C-601 and 602, in youth size 3, narrow. Four pairs of shoes arrive, two black and primly laced for schooldays, two white with tiny silver buckles for holy days. They fit perfectly. The sister offers Jiang an awed glance, and even the young man is impressed. He chooses A-23 and C-602, which are the more expensive designs, and then as Jiang is about to lead them to the sales register, he tells her that he would like to buy another pair for Meena. Her first set of high heels. Would Jiang be so kind as to pick out something suitable, since she has such fine taste? Here he glances at her feet, at the elegant square heels she is wearing, their dark blue leather a perfect match for her pencil skirt. But his glance does not stop there. It flickers (but not disrespectfully, she decides) over the skirt, which shows off Jiang’s trim figure to advantage, over the lace blouse with the tiny puff sleeves, over her neck, her chin, her mouth, and comes to rest on her eyes.

Jiang is not totally inexperienced with men. She has attended numerous socials sponsored by the China Club, where she has had occasion to fend off dozens of ardent would-be suitors. But today, as she calls out for L-66 and P-24, in beige and dark brown, she finds that her throat is dry. Meena tries on the shoes; Jiang recommends the P-24 in brown; the brother declares that it is the perfect choice.

While a delighted Meena takes a wobbly walk around the store in her grown-up footwear, her brother hands Jiang his card. Jiang has never known a man who carries a card. She looks down at the white rectangle in her hand-how heavy, how smooth-to find that his name is Mohit Das, and that he is a manager-at such a young age!-at National and Grindlays Bank. He is thanking her for being so helpful; he is asking if she would like to go to Firpo’s with him after work tomorrow for coffee and dessert; he is asking for her phone number; he is asking her name. Jiang? he says. In his mouth it sounds elegant, more exotic than she could ever have imagined herself to be. At the end of the corridor, he turns to wave. Everything has happened so fast that she is almost too stunned to wave back. But she manages. She raises her hand-still holding his card-and smiles.

Thinking back on those days, Jiang will most remember the food. The delicate flavor of marzipan and petits fours on her tongue. And later, crisp moghlai parathas eaten in tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you could sit safely in a “family cabin” curtained off from the other diners. When they grew bolder, there were clandestine coffees and steamy vegetable cutlets among students at the Coffee House on College Street, and crisped-rice-and-potato chaat bought from street vendors because he wanted her to learn what real Bengalis loved to eat. The streetside snacks were so pungent that they made her eyes water, but even as she dabbed at her face with Mohit’s handkerchief, she had to admit the taste was worth every tear.

“I FELL IN LOVE, OF COURSE,” JIANG SAID. “WHAT IS FORBIDDEN is attractive. Also what is different. Also, when it is the first time. Put all of them together, they make strong wine.”

Whatever Mohit’s original intentions, he, too, succumbed to that intoxication soon enough. Additionally, as he observed her at work (sometimes, daringly, he would come to the store), he was taken by her fierce business acumen, her canny bargaining, her ability to match customers with the product best suited to them. Then there were the stories she told, about growing up in what he thought of as the Forbidden Palace. Were there really such fantastical places in Calcutta? He had to see for himself. And so, after a few months of clandestine meetings and stolen kisses in restaurants and movie theaters and the dusty carrels in the backs of university libraries, he armed himself with a box of Flurys cream pastries and persuaded Jiang to take him to her father so he could ask for her hand in marriage. The expected fireworks ensued. The grandmother threw a fit and threatened to return to China. (No one was too concerned by this, however; the family had migrated to India generations ago and did not even remember the name of their ancestral village.) But what surprised Jiang was that her father, usually so malleable, dug in his heels.

“He told me my marriage would fail,” Jiang said. “When I told him I loved Mohit, he said, Can fish love birds?”

Finally he couldn’t withstand her tears. He gave Jiang and Mohit reluctant permission to keep seeing each other. After a year, if they still felt the same way, he would reconsider the matter.

Mohit’s family proved tougher. Devout Hindus and staunch Bengalis, they were devastated by the prospect of their only son, carrier of the generations-proud Das name, marrying a Chee-nay heathen. The thought of slant-eyed, octopus-eating grandchildren sent Mohit’s mother’s blood pressure rocketing, confining her to bed. Mohit’s father sat him down for a man-to-man talk, in the course of which he informed him clearly that he would never give permission for such a perversion to occur in his family. The girl must have bewitched you, he said, to make you forget your responsibilities as a son and a brother. I’ve heard the Chinese have sorcerers that specialize in such things. How will we ever get Meenakshi married into a decent family if you persist with this ridiculous idea? Later he added, Have an affair, if you’re so besotted. Get her out of your system. Then we’ll look for a proper match for you-a woman I won’t be ashamed to introduce to Calcutta society as my daughter-in-law.

An incensed Mohit moved out of his parents’ house to stay with a college friend in his hostel. Soon after that, three men showed up at the shoe store and informed Mr. Feng that bad things would happen to his daughter if she didn’t leave Mohit alone. A shaken Mr. Feng forbade Jiang to leave the house. Chafing in her confinement, Jiang began to hate the home she had cherished until now. She was able to call Mohit at his office for only a few minutes each day, speaking in hurried whispers when her grandmother was taking her bath.

Mohit assured her of his love. He wasn’t going to buckle under his father’s pressure. They would elope. They would go to Darjeeling or Goa. He told her to pack her valuables and be ready. But he sounded harried. She could tell he missed his family; she understood how torn he felt. As she hid an old suitcase under her bed and filled it with clothes and the few jewels she owned, the thought of her father’s face when he discovered her defection pierced her with guilt. As she lay awake at night, imagining her life with Mohit in a hill town, or in a seaside cottage awash with bougainvilleas, she worried that one day each might blame the other for what that life cost them.

Who knows how things would have turned out? But both Jiang’s grandmother and Mohit’s mother, convinced of the imminent ruin of their families, sought divine intervention. The grandmother lit joss sticks at Kuan Yin’s shrine; the mother offered hibiscus garlands to the goddess at Kalighat. They both asked for the same boon: May Mohit and Jiang’s relationship break up, and may they subsequently marry someone suitable from their own communities.

Over millennia, people have bewailed with some justification the tardiness of the mills of the gods, but in this case they began grinding at once, though perhaps not quite in the way the requesters had envisioned. Three days after the petitions, a unit of the People’s Liberation Army of China attacked an Indian patrol in the Aksai Chin region of the western Himalayas, setting into motion the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The PLA advanced south past the McMahon Line into Indian territory, attacks spread to the eastern Himalayas and thus closer to Calcutta, and Chinese forces took over both banks of the Namka Chu River. Intelligence reports cited massive Chinese war preparations along the border. News of dead or captured jawans appeared in the papers. The Chinese consulate shut down, rumors of Mao’s plan to bomb Calcutta ran rampant, and panic flared in the city.

People stopped patronizing Chinese businesses. Stores were vandalized. A popular Chinese restaurant was set on fire because a group of customers got food poisoning and believed it was part of a deliberate plot to kill Indians. Chinese banks failed. Crimson slashes of graffiti denouncing Chinese spies appeared on the walls of houses where Chinese families were known to live. The government ordered individuals of Chinese origin to register themselves and present papers for identification. Jiang and her brother were lucky. They had been born in a hospital and had Indian birth certificates. But many others, whose families had been in the country for generations-like their Indian counterparts-had never thought of acquiring official papers. Jiang’s father was one of these.

“He was placed under house arrest,” Jiang said. “We had to lock up Feng’s and let the employees go. We didn’t know what would happen to our property, or to us. Our friends had similar problems. Vincent quit his practice. No one trusted a Chinese dentist anymore. We spent our time at home glued to the radio, trying to guess our fate. There were terrible rumors. Many friends abandoned their property and left the country. Every day the Calcutta port was jammed with Chinese trying to get berths on ships.

“I called Mohit again and again. He wasn’t there. Once a coworker picked up his phone and told me Mohit had taken leave because his mother’s health was worse. He asked my name. I didn’t give it, but I could tell he was suspicious. After that I was afraid to call, but I couldn’t bear not to. If someone else answered, I hung up. Then one day Mohit called me from a public phone. He told me to get out of Calcutta as soon as possible. He had heard that the Chinese were being sent to internment camps. Then he said that he couldn’t phone or see me again. Already he had received threats because people knew about me. He was afraid his family would be targeted as sympathizers. The worry was making his mother sicker. Forgive me, he said. I love you, but I can’t fight a whole country. Then he hung up.

“I felt like my world had ended. I couldn’t believe Mohit could let me down like this. I couldn’t even tell my family (who had their own problems) how much it hurt.”

Mohit’s sources had been accurate. Within a couple of days, Jiang’s family was notified that they must leave the country or relocate to an internment camp in Rajasthan, all the way across India. Those who did not obey would be forcibly deported to China. Jiang’s father knew that going back to China under the yoke of Mao’s Communist regime was out of the question. From refugees in the 1950s, he had heard stories of the labor camps rife with starvation and disease, the massacre of those labeled traitors to the Party. And he no longer trusted the government of India, this country that he had mistakenly loved as his own. He tried desperately to get his children out of the country- Vancouver or Brazil, San Francisco or Sydney or Fiji -it did not matter where. (Paperless as he and his mother were, he knew they had no hope.) But the Chinese exodus was at its peak. There were no airplane tickets, no ocean berths. Mr. Feng was willing to pay a hefty bribe, but he discovered that others had already paid equally hefty bribes.

Two days before the family was to board the train that would transport them to the hot, dry quarry town of Deoli, Vincent managed to locate a friend-an acquaintance, really-whom he had met a couple of times at the Chinese Dentists Club. Curtis Chan was the lucky possessor of a berth on a ship that was to leave for America in the morning-and he was a bachelor. That evening, unknown to Jiang, her father and brother bribed the guard posted outside their house and went to Curtis Chan’s home. They took with them Jiang’s photograph, a stack of dollars that Mr. Feng had managed to procure by calling in favors, several of his rare calligraphy scrolls, and all her mother’s jewelry.

Curtis Chan was a practical man. He had been approached by two families with unmarried daughters earlier that day, and at the very moment the Fengs rang his doorbell, he had been getting ready to phone one of them. But perhaps he had a romantic streak in him, too, or a love of art. Otherwise why would he, after examining Jiang’s photograph and one of the scrolls, agree to Mr. Feng’s proposition, even though one of the other families had offered him as many dollars, more valuable jewelry, and, additionally, a bag of gold Krugerrands? Vincent was dispatched home to fetch his sister. Mr. Feng and Mr. Chan-it is appropriate that we should address him in this manner, because as Jiang was about to discover, he was decidedly older than her brother and going bald, besides-hurried to the Buddhist temple in Tangra.

“And, just like that,” Jiang said, “I was married.”

Under normal circumstances, Jiang would have balked at the summary manner in which her father had decided her fate, yoking her to this middle-aged, stocky stranger, without even asking her opinion. But since Mohit’s phone call, she had been walking around in a numb haze that gave way periodically to fits of furious tears. One moment she wanted a bomb to obliterate all of Calcutta, or at least the Das household. The next moment she wanted time to rewind itself to that day at Feng’s so that she could leave the shop before Mohit arrived, and thus avoid the entire heartache of loving him. At other times she longed for Mohit to break down the door of the Feng mansion and carry her away to a place where her Chineseness would not matter. Buffeted by contradictions, she stood in the Buddhist temple, under the ominous shadows thrown by a single, shaky candle (Calcutta was under blackout orders), and did as the priest instructed, her motions jerky as a puppet’s. It was only the next morning, as she was about to board the Sea Luck, that she seemed to realize the enormity of what had happened. She threw her arms around her father, insisting that she would not leave him, that she would rather that they died together. It took her brother and her new husband all their strength to get her up the gangplank while her father, himself in tears, tried to console her. I’ll be fine. I’llbe back in the house once the government sorts things out. Then I’ll come to America to pay you a visit. And your brother will join you soon. We’ll get him on another ship in a few days.

None of the things he promised came to pass. Within a year, he died of a heart attack at the camp, his devastated mother following him soon after. As for Vincent, he did get on a ship, but one bound for Australia, and it was years before he and his sister found each other.

“That was the last time anyone would see me cry,” Jiang said.

The monthlong voyage seemed endless, with the Chans cooped up in a minuscule cabin with another newly married couple. (Upon boarding they had discovered that the captain, taking advantage of the helplessness of his customers, had double-sold tickets.) Mr. Chan and Mr. Lu, understanding that they had no recourse, made the best of it. They divided the little space they had with a blanket that served as a curtain, made up a bed on the floor where each couple slept on alternate nights, and created a strict timetable for the use of the cabin so that they would each get some privacy with their wives. This had a twofold result. Mr. Chan and Mr. Lu formed a lifelong friendship, and by the end of the voyage, Jiang was pregnant.

How did she feel about this last development? Did joy course through her as the baby grew? Or did she feel sick with worry at the prospect of having a child in a place where she knew no one who could support her through childbirth and into motherhood? Did she feel fondness for the child’s father-or perhaps even the beginnings of love? Did she resent him for imprisoning her in a bloated body that would no longer fit into the pretty clothes she brought from Calcutta? Did she compare him with someone else who had kissed her more tenderly? Or did she tolerate him with resignation, because what choice did she have?

In America, they moved from city to city until Mr. Chan was forced to accept the fact that his dentist’s degree was worthless here. Finally, they sold Jiang’s jewelry and bought a small grocery in a Chinatown. Jiang helped in the store, dividing her attention between the customers and the babies-one, then two, in the playpen in the tiny back room. She was so good at managing the business that by the time the babies grew into children, the store had expanded into a supermarket and the Chans lived in a comfortable apartment above it. The family bought another supermarket and then a third; the children were sent to private schools; they moved to a large and lavish apartment in a gated building.

Everything Jiang required for daily life lay within the boundaries of Chinatown -markets, movie theaters, the houses of friends, the children’s schools. Was there another need? If so, she buried that hankering deep within herself. In this new, compacted existence, there was no necessity for her to speak English, so she let it go. And, along with the language she had once prided herself on speaking so well, she let go of that portion of her past where English had played an important part. By the time her grandchildren were born, she communicated only in Mandarin.

Sometimes in the evenings Mr. Lu, now a widower, visited Mr. Chan. Jiang served them tea and dim sum but never joined in their wistful reminiscences. Her brother, Vincent, having finally managed to locate her, paid them a visit from Australia, where after decades of hard work he had risen to be the manager of-ah, ironic world!-a shoe factory. She was happy to see him, if in a bemused kind of way. (This stooped, tobacco-chewing man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair did not seem to her to be connected in any way to the young man she had left behind on the docks of Calcutta, dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt.) When he brought up their childhood, waxing poetic about the hidden mansion in which they were raised, she refused to indulge in nostalgia with him. Only fools chewed the cud of the past.

But something was dislodged inside her as she listened to her husband and her brother conversing. After Vincent left, she found herself sitting by her bedroom window, staring out. Instead of the busy streets of Chinatown she saw an enclosed courtyard, roses spilling over a stone bench, children running around a fountain, screaming with laughter. The moon rose, shaking her heart with its beauty. Her father recited poetry, and she mouthed the words along with him. Each day she could smell the mango trees more distinctly. Inside her, emptiness grew until she felt like a hollowed-out bamboo. So when Mr. Chan passed away and Vincent wrote that he was planning a trip to Calcutta to decide whether he wanted to retire there, she wrote back impulsively-surprising herself, because she had thought herself long done with impulsiveness-that she would meet him in the city of her youth.

“Why am I going?” Jiang said. She shrugged and spread her hands. “Not sure. End of story.”