14

Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and
Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was
already in existence, and even then breaking up
in a gentle spring rain.…

Walden, “The Ponds”

“But how can there be a dump beside Walden Pond?” Ananda said innocently. “And a public beach? And a park for caravans?”

“Oh, we get tired of our heroes in the United States,” said Homer dryly. “Granted, there was this man living in our town who wrote the best American prose of the nineteenth century, and it’s true he was the founder of the conservation movement, and he taught us how to live the good and simple life, and he preached a pure religion without cant, and he invented the idea of civil disobedience that would one day free the people of India and bring a measure of equality to American blacks, not to mention the fact that he was the best surveyor for miles around and made the finest pencils in the country—granted all those things, what do people say about him? He was a crank, that’s what they say. He stole Mrs. Emerson’s mince pies right off her windowsill.”

“But surely they don’t say those things here? Not right here in Concord?”

“Especially in Concord.”

Ananda shook his head sadly. “Alas, I know it to be true. There was a man at the place called Pond View. He said Thoreau was a drunk, and he had sex with women in his cabin.”

“There,” said Homer, laughing. “You see?”

They were sitting on the front porch, looking out over Fair Haven Bay. Below them the little slope dropped to the spongy edge of the river. The water was high. Blue flags blossomed in the shallows amid a swarm of mayflies. Ananda jumped up as Mary came running out with a handful of knives and forks. “You must let me help,” he said eagerly.

“It’s just spaghetti.” Mary looked at him curiously. “Can you cook?”

“Cook?” It had never occurred to Ananda that he might ever be asked such a question. “Alas, I fear—”

“That’s all right. Here, you can throw these around the table.” Mary disappeared, and Ananda fumbled with the cutlery while Homer went back to Thoreau.

“Of course it isn’t everybody in town who thinks he was a careless hippie. There are a few of us enlightened souls. There’s the Thoreau Lyceum, for one thing, and the Thoreau Society. And there’s always Oliver Fry.”

“Oliver Fry?” Clumsily Ananda arranged the knives and forks here and there. He remembered the statuesque girl at the railroad station and her angry father. “Does Mr. Fry have a daughter?”

“Hope Fry,” said Mary, coming out on the porch with the plates. “A grand girl.”

“True,” said Homer, “but I don’t know if her father is a blessing or a curse. The trouble is, Oliver feels things too strongly. He gets mad and polarizes things.”

“But he has a true heart,” said Mary stoutly, slapping down the plates.

Ananda followed her back into the kitchen, anxious to be of service. Left in charge of stirring the spaghetti sauce, he burned it, and before the evening was over he broke a wineglass. “Alas,” he said while Mary squirted disinfectant on his cut finger, “I fear I am rather clumsy.”

“You can’t be any clumsier than my husband,” said Mary comfortingly. “Tell me, is your bed comfortable? Is it what you’re used to back home?”

“It is perfect,” said Ananda. “But the rent you have suggested is not enough. I will find work, and then I will pay you more. This is the best place to live in all the world.”

Mary looked at him shrewdly as he struggled with a Band-Aid. His clothes were wrinkled and oddly assorted, half western, half Indian. The boy was obviously an impoverished student. His money wouldn’t last long. “No, no,” she said, “you won’t pay us a cent more.”

Ananda Singh exclaimed and argued, but Mary was stubborn, and he went to bed without persuading her to raise his rent. It was true that his cash resources would not support him for long, but Ananda was not a poor student. His father was a wealthy sugar planter with thousands of acres of ancestral land in Himachal Pradesh in the high plains of northern India. Ananda’s father was also a celebrated cabinet minister in New Delhi. But Ananda’s compulsive flight to America had not had his parents’ blessing.

“I will not pay for such a thing,” his father had said, and Ananda had retorted politely, “Of course not. I shall pay my own way.” And then he had shown his father his earnings as a clerk in a London shop.

Ananda’s mother had been especially disappointed. Her eldest son was the apple of her eye, and she had in mind a list of clever Brahman girls of good family for him to choose among. They were all university women—a practicing physician in white coat and running shoes, a dietitian in sari and sandals, a social worker in gold bangles and salwaar-kameez. There would be a beautiful traditional wedding, with Ananda and his bride sitting together under the bridal canopy.

Instead her austere young son had set aside such things. He had never joined the others of his set at the Green Room in Simla, he had not strolled with the crowd at Scandal Point. “He has his nose in those books of his,” his mother complained to his father.

It was true. From the very beginning when Ananda had been captivated by his grandmothei’s stories of Krishna and the milkmaids, he had been lost in stories. Slowly he had spread the net of his interest farther and farther, from the Hindu sagas of the Mahabharata to the novels of Narayan and Naipaul, from the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare to those of Jane Austen and Melville and Faulkner. At the University of London he had taken a fancy to the mystics, from Tagore and Vivekananda to Thomas a Kempis and St. Francis of Assisi. And then one day his tutor introduced him to Henry Thoreau, and Ananda was stunned. It was the pinnacle of all that had been gathering in his mind. Here was a reverent mysticism based on the natural world, amazingly united with political idealism.

“I will get a job,” Ananda repeated to Homer. “I can be a clerk in a shop. I can work in a library. I can sell books.”

Homer looked at him doubtfully. “The bookstore is gone, unfortunately. That woman Pink replaced it with a store full of porcelain geegaws.”

He glanced at Mary, and she too tried to imagine Ananda as a useful member of the working class. “Try the library,” she said firmly.

Next day Homer and Ananda began with the Concord Library. It was one of Homer’s favorite places, and he was glad to see that Ananda too was pleased. While Homer asked for the head librarian, Ananda paid worshipful visits to the busts of Thoreau and Hawthorne and the great seated statue of Emerson.

But there was no place there for Ananda. “The truth is, we’ve been letting people go,” said the head librarian. “And the squeeze is getting tighter all the time. I’m sorry.”

Homer and Ananda walked up Main Street and looked warily at the smart shops with their bright awnings. In Corporate Gifts on Walden Street they found Mimi Pink herself behind the counter.

Mimi was charmed with Ananda’s romantic good looks and his beautiful accent. “You’re new in this country?” she asked him. “Do you know American money?”

“Of course he does,” said Homer, inwardly vowing to take Ananda aside and explain nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Ananda looked around, puzzled. “What is it you are selling here?” There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the odd objects in the shop. Today Mimi was featuring a large pillow shaped like a sports car, a nine-foot broadloom putting green, and a zebra-striped telephone. Ananda picked up a ceramic object masquerading as a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

“It’s a bank,” said Mimi. “Isn’t it divine?”

Ananda looked sad and put the object down.

“I don’t know,” said Homer, taking him by the arm. “I suspect a disciple of Henry Thoreau wouldn’t do very well selling corporate gifts.”

“Oh, you’re a Thoreau person, are you?” said Mimi, trying to rescue the situation. The boy was so yummy, she simply had to have him. She knew only one thing about Thoreau,. so she trotted it out. “Did you know he used to steal pumpkin pies from Mrs. Emerson?”

Homer glanced at Ananda. “Mince,” he said to Mimi Pink.

“Mince?”

“The pies he didn’t steal. They weren’t pumpkin, they were mince.”

Later that afternoon they found an opening for Ananda in the hardware store. Homer was surprised to see Charlotte Harris sitting in a corner under a goosenecked lamp, doing something with invoices and catalogs. “Well, hello there,” he said politely, and introduced Ananda.

“Hello,” said Charlotte. Blood washed freely through the freckled skin of her face as she remembered her letter to Julian Snow. She pointed to the counter, where the owner of the store was puttying a window.

The proprietor had been looking for a salesperson, and he hired Ananda at once.

Ananda was delighted. “I will learn quickly,” he said ardently, picking up a tool from the counter. “Tell me, what is this?”

“That?” Homer was dumbfounded. “It’s a screwdriver.” He picked up a hammer. “Do you know what this is?”

“Of course. It is a hammer. You see, I will soon know everything.”

“Well, I can see that,” said the proprietor, somewhat taken aback.