Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Hello, Amanda,” she said.

I was on a red plastic raft in the middle of the pool, my feet in the water, a glass in one hand. Eager for the shouting to start, I paddled with my free hand toward shore, but managed only to set myself revolving madly, so that I saw only spinning glimpses of them.

“Hello, Mother,” Amanda said, climbing out of the water. They puckered their lips a good inch away from each other’s cheeks, and then the mother sat on a beach chair, her legs elegantly crossed and dangling a foot in a streamlined black shoe with a needle-sharp heel. Her dress was some kind of black lace and she was wearing a large black hat with a curving rim.

“Mother,” Amanda said. “This is Abhay. He’s at school with me. Abhay, this is Candy, my mother.”

“Hello,” I said. The raft was finally still.

“Hello.”

Then we sat and waited. Amanda sipped her drink calmly, in what I thought was a kind of hushed anticipation of her father’s huge patriarchal anger. But he was a tall, square-jawed man, William James, with absolutely white hair and brilliant blue eyes, who came in and said hello politely and then poured himself a drink. And this went on until the mother said, “Shall we go in for lunch?”

As we went in I whispered to Amanda, “They’ll shout at you when you’re alone with them?” I could see I had puzzled her again, but then we were pulling out the chairs around a large oak table, so I sat down and we ate, and the mother talked about state politics, film, and Jerry Hall. The lunch was served by a young Taiwanese woman named Annie. So we ate carefully, the cutlery click-clicking and Candy’s calm voice a gentle music, but meanwhile Amanda had her bare foot up my trouser leg and was tracing circles and hoops of unmistakable lewdness on my shinbone. And over the table was a life-sized painting of two puffed-up people in formal clothes, whose names came to me from some unspeakable depth in my memory: Prince Albert and Princess Alexandrina. And while the prince and the princess gazed at me with a grand condescension that took no notice of time and history, I had the certain feeling that I had seen Candy somewhere before. It was a confusing lunch, and by the time it was over I was dizzy, more giddy now than curious about Amanda, and I very badly wanted to sleep. “Amanda,” I said, putting down my coffee spoon. “Do you think I could take a nap?” I really was very tired, and I stumbled as I followed Amanda down a long wood-paneled corridor. I sank gratefully into the cool white pillow, and just as I began to breathe deeply I had the sensation I was falling from a great height, that I was floating, but then I was asleep.

I woke up and thought I was in another world. I mean I had no idea where I was and all I could see was the dim gleam of light on wood and darkness. The wind moved outside the window, gauzy curtains drifted and for a long moment I thought I was in some city of horse carriages and gas lamps, and my mouth was bitter and my breath heavy, but then slowly everything righted itself and I knew where I was. I stood up and walked slowly down the corridor, eager now to see what I could. But the house was still and silent, the lights all dimmed, and I found no sign of Candy, or William James, or Annie. From the kitchen I got a glass of water and walked back through the house again, and as I was going through a late Edwardian study I saw the outline of a head, and with a start I spilled the water on the ground.

“Abhay.” It was Amanda. She was sitting in the darkness with a drink in her hand. I sat next to her and took up her hand, full of sympathy.

“Did it go all right?” I said. “Did they get real mean?”

“Abhay, you’re so off. They’re used to it.”

“They’re used to you just taking off from school and showing up with strange people? Strange men? Strange brown men?”

She said nothing, and emptied her glass. I watched as she poured from a bottle.

“You know,” I said. “I think I’ve seen your mother somewhere before.”

“Probably have,” she said. “Everyone has.”

“Everyone?”

“She was a centerfold.”

“Playboy?” I asked, with a sudden shock of recognition.

“Yes.”

And suddenly I was back in a seventh-grade dormitory, outside a windy desert night, inside Karan and Mich and I with a flashlight, bent over a magazine passed down from class to class like an heirloom, repaired and preserved with yellowing tape, now finally ours. Suppressed laughter, groans, oh, man, look at that, and finally when with a soft flick the gatefold fell open and the pool of light moved over unreal legs and breasts and blond hair so perfect, then only awe and silence. After years and years, remembering again the slow graceful fall of the page, the revelation of the paragon, I felt again the same mingled feeling of joy and sickness, the wonder and the bitterness of looking at the splendid goddess and wondering will I ever have that? So my stomach hurt a little but I laughed and said, “You’ll never believe this but your mother and I go way back.”

“I bet.” She laughed as she said this.

“She got me in trouble.” What happened was that there was a girl who lived across the maidan named Vibha, a second-year medical student. I knew only vaguely of her, but one summer when I came back for the holidays she was famous. People would turn around and elbow each other when she walked by, and she seemed to pass in a small circle of silence rimmed by whispers. When I asked, my mother shrugged and changed the subject, embarrassed. But others were eager to tell me: what she had done was fall in love. There was a boy named Ramesh who lived next door, two years younger than her. They talked to each other, it was told, in the early morning when Vibha went up to the roof to study. In that quiet hour before dawn they sat together and talked. They were, of course, discovered, and Ramesh was sent away to his grandfather’s village and Vibha was suddenly infamous. But it wasn’t the sordid stories I heard that made me sick and angry, not the ugly jokes told by men on street corners, it was Vibha’s courage, her superb dignity, the way she held her head and walked down the street, her books held close to her chest, her clear eyes and her calm face, it was this that made me furious. I wanted to do something, to tear down the little houses huddled together in their own smugness, to free myself of the heavy and unchanging air that settled in the narrow lanes and suffocated me. Yet there was nothing I could do.

I had the magazine with me, a Thanksgiving issue of Playboy from six years ago, the pages a little yellow but still with a distinctive smell that I had grown to like. The magazine had been entrusted to me for the holidays, to keep carefully and bring back to school for the delectation of all and the education of our juniors. I used to leaf through it at night with my door closed, with a strong feeling of longing rather than excitement. Late one evening I was sitting by a tree on the maidan, my chin on my knees, when in the darkness I saw a lone figure moving through the dust. It was late, and everyone had gone in, so there were no catcalls, no lewd remarks, but by the gait I knew it was Vibha. She walked by me without turning her head, and it was only after she had gone through her gate, let the latch down with a sudden clang, that I heard a single, soft sob. I stood up but I could see nothing in the shadows, and I only heard a door open and close gently. I shook in the darkness as if with a fever, and the next morning I left the Playboy open on my bed, the centerfold opened over the pillow. My mother found it of course, and then she and my father talked to me with sadness and concern. Even then I knew how paltry the gesture was, how little, and that it was somehow unfair to aim it at my parents, but it was all I had. I looked at them, at my mother with her puzzled eyes, and at my father with his gentleness, and my anger only grew. I tried to improve on my badness by coming home late, by not speaking to anyone, and even went on a search for serious evil, but I didn’t know where to find a brothel, and nobody would sell me a drink, and anyway I didn’t have the money. Anyhow, I felt a kinship with Vibha as I slouched through the streets, and at the end of that summer I made my final declaration of war. Every year my mother held a puja, a week-long prayer in which the pandit told the story of Krishna, from his ancestry to his birth and his adventures, including his dalliances with the beautiful gopis, finally through to his death. When I was a child I used to sit rapt, listening to the repeated story, anticipating every turn and twist and finding pleasure in all of it, especially in the mentions of Ganesha and Hanuman, whom I loved most because they were animals before they were gods. Now I stayed in my room, and when my mother came and said, come, come, it’s starting, we must start, I said, I’m not coming, I don’t believe any of it. All she could say was why, why? I shook my head, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, I said, that’s all it is, Krishna’s love, while outside… I finished with a shrug, and she left looking helpless. It seemed unbearably tawdry to me, the little black image of Krishna with its cheap little doll’s clothes of pink and silver, the smell of the burning ghee, the fat priest and his smugness and his droning voice, all of it unthinking and by rote. For a week I left the house early and came back late, and after it was all over I found it hard to say anything to my parents, and the rest of the holidays slipped by in silence. I thought unceasingly of the woman in the magazine, and passed long hot afternoons dreaming of her, trying to conjure up the details of her life, her car, her perfume, her house, her dog, her family.