ALTHOUGH I’D FLED New York for India to be alone, to be deaf to the world around me, in the week before I returned to New York, India ignored me all too well, as my apprehension over returning home became almost unbearable. My insomnia increased and the few hours I slept were fitful and plagued by nightmares. Not only my thoughts but also my behavior became obsessive. In a move reminiscent of my parents at their most ridiculous, I packed and repacked my suitcase time and time again. My waking hours became daymares, fraught with anxiety and dread.
Sarah called me from Romey’s on Christmas day. Romey began making noises about the size of the phone bill. I said I’d call back, but the bill was only a pretense for Romey’s orneriness. I heard her yell, “What’s the big deal? He doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway.” Knowing we’d see each other soon, we decided I shouldn’t call back. Best left to do our talking in person.
Holika, gone down the path of her life’s calling and then joining Samaka, didn’t contact me. Charlie and his family vacationed in Pune. I didn’t feel comfortable calling Levi. He’d given me his x-rays, MRI reports, and all the needed material. We left it that I’d call him when I got back. I got tipsy one night with Chandon, who rhapsodized about childhood and his idolized mother, who lived in the foothills of the Himalayas. He and Vishnu planned to zip off to their home villages the minute after they dropped me off at the airport. One evening I marshaled my defenses and called Ludovicci-Lint to inform her of my impending arrival. She insisted on a face-to-face meeting at her office. I didn’t tell her the exact date I was coming, leaving, or the day of the unveiling. I did make an appointment. The conversation helped my paralytic funk not one bit.
So, it thrilled me out of all proportion when Tracee called and asked if I’d like to meet for dinner.
She suggested Kwality, not far from Connaught Place. The pinkish-hued decor of the drapes, blood-red tablecloths, and bright lights seemed like a Bollywood set for a restaurant. Tracee thought the owner preferred this style to impress the tourists with the cleanliness of his establishment. He proudly gave us menus and bragged about the “quality” of his chef, ignorant of Tracee’s professional acumen.
Tracee showed up decked out in a jade-colored sari, gold earrings, much makeup, an amethyst necklace, a nose ring, and bangles on her wrists and ankles. A bit flashy, I thought, but if it made her feel better about herself, why the hell not? She shook my hand with her bony hand, which felt damn cold. Bad circulation. She chose a table in the back corner and sat with her back to the wall. She ordered a vast assortment of appetizers. She certainly appeared heartier, which begged the question, Was the anorexic critic on a new diet? “No, no, I’ve started writing a monthly column for Bahar’s magazine. And better makeup, lip botox implants, and laser surgery can do wonders even for someone with a death sentence.” Before I could lecture her, in between bites and comments—“too much cumin, can’t taste the mustard seeds”—she told me that she fainted again right after her return to New York, in the offices of Cosmo. “What a scene. The editor either wanted me fired because I was on drugs or given a raise so I could afford a therapist.” A friend, who knew her diagnosis, dragged her to a specialist where she underwent a battery of tests. Her T-cell count remained over one thousand. She suffered none of the usual symptoms of oncoming full-blown AIDS. After more sessions with this doctor, who insisted she did not have a “death sentence,” she changed her diet from one “where 90 percent of my calories came from cigarettes, vodka, and diet pills.” She even began practicing yoga. She had her limits, “Aerobic exercise is not in my past, present, or future.” She decided not to start her on a protease cocktail yet, only a regimen of vitamins and supplements.
As she sipped her vodka, her voice lost its “gimme a break, don’t kid me” drollness, dropped a register, and hissed out with a surreptitious intimacy. “What do you think of Holika’s engagement?”
Not sure of her motive I waffled, “Good, I guess. What do you think?”
“Oh, we are playing the answer-a-question-with-a-question American game, are we?” She shook her head. “I smelled the way you two practically screwed on the dance floor.” She twitched her nose from side to side. “Don’t deny and don’t worry. No one else noticed. They were either too drunk or too self-involved.”
The waiter brought my Kwality Chicken and Tracee took a dip of the sauce with a piece of garlic naan bread. Tasted excellent to me. She rolled the small bite around in her mouth. “Indians are good at Indian food, leave the creamed sauces to the French. Now, you were getting ready to deny something …”
I cut her a piece of the chicken. “Try this, it’s very tender.” She stabbed it with her fork. “What I was going to say doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s that mean?”
She took her fork, with the chicken hanging off the edge, which reminded me of a Francis Bacon painting, and I started to lose my appetite as she pointed it directly at me, almost accusing me of some unspoken error of judgment. “My opinion is that Vijay is not as he presents himself.”
“What’s that have to do with Holika’s engagement?”
“You are naive.” She took a gulp of her vodka, which still supplied an ample amount of her calories. “Has Vijay regaled you with his tales of the jailed patriot?”
“No, but plenty of others have.”
“It’s bullshit.” She looked suspiciously around.
“I have a feeling the reason I’ve heard is not your reason.”
“You are right there, Doctor. Pillai started out by selling treasures from his own and his wife’s family. Then in the early 1970s Pillai smuggled artifacts and treasures from our museums, from our temples, and from other desperate families, and replaced them with fakes. They finally caught and jailed him months before the Emergency.”
Tracee used the word our, which didn’t surprise me at all. Her speech, her education, many of her attitudes reflected her American side; her inner-self boasted of Indian pride.
“He received amnesty when the Emergency ended. Almost everyone did. Then he created this myth around himself, making speeches and writing articles, but he also kept his money and he became oh so legitimate and started Indya Petrochemicals.” She stuck her left index finger in her mouth as if she were going to try to make herself wretch. From anyone else this would’ve been a childish gesture, but from Tracee it made me nervous. “Be cool, doc. I was never a puker. I’m telling you deadly serious stuff here—think I’m gonna ruin this with a scene? Got something stuck in a molar.” I laughed and nodded. “So few people remember, and the longer it goes the more the lie becomes accepted truth and everyone fears him. But there are those who will never forgive him and his partners for selling out our country.”
The story reminded me of Sarah’s maternal ancestor Mawbridge Brockton. During most of the Revolutionary War he sold munitions and supplies to both sides. As the tide began to favor us future Americans, Brockton arranged a commission for himself as a Colonel in the Colonial army. After the war he used his status to make a fortune. Fatefully, the only legacy left to Sarah from that long-spent fortune was her middle name and a listing in Daughters of the American Revolution.
“How do you know all this?” I asked, slightly suspicious.
“You remember what I said my husband’s family did?”
“Sure,” I nodded. They were importers and exporters of Asian art. Art historians. They’d know.
“Does Holika know all of this?”
“She knows what she knows, interprets how she must, and then, like all of us, believes what she believes.” That told me nothing but my instinct said she must know. “You must be discreet. Many who you think you can trust you can’t.” She smiled beguilingly.
“I’m trying to learn that. I trust Holika.”
“Did she tell you she was married before?”
“To Siddhartha Singh.”
Tracee nodded as if to say “So, things got that far, eh …” She took a bite of a spiced coconut salad. “Nearly parfait—both Siddhartha and the salad. I admired him. We all did. He loved people. Especially women. Siddhartha believed the women of India would rescue us from the patriarchal superiority.”
I was slowly forming a picture of Siddhartha, whose charisma belied a cunning and practical mind that understood the complexity of the male–female relationship in India. Tracee’s veins became visible through her pale skin as she explained his vision.
He believed even the worst woman beater or berater could be changed if educated correctly. Siddhartha believed in the women of India much more than the men. No one was more disappointed in Indira Gandhi than he. I think her failure turned him even more radical. He also understood the irony of his being male, but he seemed to know women would have to carry on his work.
“So, sounds like you knew him well?”
“Yes, he mentored many of us.” She squirmed away from the table and leaned her back against the pink cushion of her chair as the waiter served me a conventional dessert of chocolate cake and a honey-dipped fried banana for Tracee. She sighed, but she cared less about Siddhartha than Holika, now more than ever knowing she’d trusted me, and who Tracee felt an almost maternal need to protect, yet whose flaws she didn’t soft sop. She whispered even more softly than when she’d put the truth to Vijay’s lie, so I had to lean across the table, our heads coming within six inches of each other. “I love Holika. When we were young she acted more like a sister to me than my sisters. Now, well, we have suffered some distance.” She needn’t explain the never specifically understood divides and fissures that arise between once close friends, where beyond the divide, the closeness exists unblemished. Tracee, her hazel eyes unblinking, insisted that I get her message, “Holika has the capability to act with incredible willfulness. Given the chance, she will do great things for India. But she thinks that she is more powerful and crafty than she is. What she’s doing now is so courageous, but also dangerous.” She sat back, her posture straightened with pride.
“Is it that dangerous to tell women about birth control and that they don’t always have to listen to their husbands?”
“Yes, that is more dangerous than you can know but …” She paused and her eyes said, Do you know this? “But that is not all she’s doing.”
“Yeah, but she also asked me not to speak of it with anyone.”
“I am not anyone. Holika thinks she holds Siddhartha’s mantle and she is fighting Vijay and the Americans. That’s why I think she’s marrying Samaka—to get his help.”
I thought of Holika’s admonition when we first met—nothing in India is what it seems. I didn’t know how right she was, or how much she had risked by trusting me.
Tracee’s voice stayed firm without any scintilla of doubt as she described how, yes, Vijay believed he could sway Samaka to his side and have Holika married off to a future ally at the same time.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“People you think are your friends are not. You need to beware of everyone, and please, be careful for Holika.” She sat back while the waiter filled her glass with white wine.
I needed no more warning. Not that I supposed I needed to hear it. A supposition that got support when Holika called me.
“You prepared?” I heard the swagger of contentment that enters a person’s voice when all life is going well.
“You love that question.”
She laughed in a voice bigger sounding than her small body.
“I got my ticket? Yeah, but … no, … How’re you doing?”
“We had a productive trip. Mostly peaceful.” I thought I heard her light a cigarette and take a puff. Then came a long pause, an exhale of air, and a question I never expected. “Neil, you are not a scoundrel are you?”
“I sure hope not.”
“No, you are not. Do not behave like a burner either …”
“I’m not sure what you mean, I wouldn’t ever …” I felt compelled to defend myself. It would’ve been bullshit. I stopped. She didn’t mean literally. The silence drifted in between her warning and my acceptance of my “inner Nazi.”
“You must do your best to understand Sarah.”
“Yeah.” I sighed.
“Please, call me when you get back. I will give you my cell number.” She wished me a better and happy New Year and then she was gone.
The conversation left me feeling even emptier. I needed to purge my inner space of anger, yet at that moment my gut and my id overflowed with the dreaded fever of purgatorial anticipation. I wanted so desperately to feel even the illusion of control over my future—I had carefully planned all external-world goings and comings and meetings—yet, what I needed to control lay far beyond my powers. When Chandon dropped me off at the airport on New Year’s Eve, I began the long journey home.