Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Levi’s Low Rise!” the Creationist replied.

Mrs. Solanki gave another desiccated laugh.

On the way to the Solankis, Anju notices a blond, wind-whipped head leaning out the passenger window of a car, possibly a tourist like her, a thought that inspires a comforting sense of fellowship. Squinting, she realizes that the head belongs to a dog. It calmly surveys the puckered water, the elegant cluster of skyscrapers on the horizon. Anju has read of these buildings. During the three months she spent waiting for her visa, she scoured a library book called America Today to bring herself up to speed on the nation’s recent history and politics, in case her schoolmates might want to talk history and politics. (She read somewhere that New Yorkers routinely quote Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.) According to the book, “The world’s first skyscrapers were built by Bethlehem Steel, a company also responsible for laying the nation’s first railroad track and supplying steel for the Golden Gate Bridge.” The book went on to mention the bankruptcy of Bethlehem Steel in 2001, but failed to name the new transnational titans, the Tatas and Mittals who had run them out of their own country. (This was a fact that Anju’s former history teacher, a spirited nationalist, had proclaimed to the class with a victorious double pump of his fist.) And despite Anju’s own sense of patriotism, both of these things — the death of Bethlehem Steel and the skyline whose incompleteness she will never fully know — fill her with a sudden gray nostalgia for a country not her own.

Lost in the undulations of power lines, she stops paying attention to the large green signs that indicate unfamiliar cities. The besuited man is driving fast but no faster than the cars around her, each one carrying a person lulled into a similar spell, the boundless speed somehow slowing time. A jet has drawn a chalky scrawl across the sky but seems to move no further. Dozy yet anxious, she focuses on the wisdoms plastered on the bumpers of passing cars, particularly one that leaves her with the militant order to LIVE LARGER, DRIVE SMALLER! NOT EVERYONE NEEDS AN SUV!

THE SOLANKIS LIVE in a vanilla cake. Anju has seen nothing of such spotless grandeur, a colossus with carved accents and curls along its corners, surrounded by a shiny iron gate with the stern, bearded bust of a Roman general impaled at every post. Morning light blushes the windows, whose sills are spiked so as to ward away incontinent pigeons. The driveway circles the front like a smile.

Gold block letters spell THE MONARCH over the revolving glass doors, which usher her onto a red velvet carpet leading past an oasis of plants and fountains, beneath a series of chandeliers like bright, brass octopi, to the front desk. Upon hearing Anju’s name, a man in a black suit asks her how she is doing in a way that seems earnestly invested in her answer. “Very good,” she says. He tells her to go on up; her bags will arrive shortly.

Alone in the elevator, she finds a bench with a deep green leather cushion. She sits down. The ground rises up. Sitting has never seemed so luxurious.

The elevator deposits her before an open door made of rich, dark wood. Shoes off or on? Her first impression seems to hinge on this decision. Out of respect for tradition: off.

“Hello?” she calls. Hesitating, she steps inside. Her feet are greeted by cold marble, white with wisps of gray.

The living room is full of beautiful clutter, organized to keep the gaze traveling from one piece to the next. A stained-glass window on the far wall first captures her attention, a geometric design built in brilliant wedges and disks of red, yellow, and green. Niches are carved into the walls to house sculptures and vases, like the leaping salmon of glass or the bust of a brass ram with two black, curling horns. And though the Solankis might refrain from cow, they seem to take pleasure in other piecemeal animals. An elephant foot with tough, scalloped toenails supports the round glass top of a side table. Beneath the piano, the skins of two zebra lie next to each other, arms benignly overlapping. Anju catches her foot in the smiling maw of a bear.

“Happens to people all the time,” a man says, stepping on the bear’s back. In anguish, she notes his cashew-colored shoe next to the nudity of her foot.

Once she is freed, the man shakes her hand and introduces himself as Varun. Around his mouth is a neat, black wreath of facial hair.

And then, the clean click-click of heels as a woman calls out from some upper, unseen level, “Is that Anju?” Mrs. Solanki appears in the hollow of a Spanish-looking arch. Overall, she gives the impression of shininess, from the satin tunic she wears over her pants to the laminated look of her bobbed hairstyle.

“Hello, Auntie.” Anju makes a small, awkward bow with folded hands. “Uncle.”

“No need for that.” Mrs. Solanki descends the stairs with minimal trembling of her bob. “You can call me Sonia.”

Sonia and Varun. Using these names makes Anju feel as if she is trying to hug her host parents prematurely. Mr. and Mrs. will do.

“How many times have I said to get rid of that thing, Varun?” Mrs. Solanki shakes her head at the bear rug. “My mother is scared to open the door because of it.”

“Maybe we should get one for all the doors,” Mr. Solanki says.

Dismissing him with an elegant wave, Mrs. Solanki enfolds Anju into a well of spicy perfume.

ANJU SITS ON the slippery edge of a sofa that, like all the chairs in the living room, is heaped with filigreed, loaflike cushions. Mrs. Solanki places a dish of tiny beef samosas on the coffee table, as well as another one of raw carrots and broccoli which she calls “organic.” Anju partakes from the samosa plate, only after watching Mr. Solanki plunge two into his mouth.

“My family is from Bombay,” Mr. Solanki says. “You’ve been there?”

“I was born there,” Anju says. “We moved back to Kerala when I was small. To a village called Kumarakom.”

“Such different places.” Mr. Solanki smiles. Like Mrs. Solanki’s, his skin is smooth and taut, as though it has been surgically stretched, like canvas, at the corners of his eyes. “Have you heard of my family home, Solanki Villa? On Solanki Way? Pappa wanted to call it The Solanki Villa, but Mumma said, ‘How many Solanki Villas are there?’”

She marvels at his accent, slightly Indian with a British prissiness to it, like the Bollywood actor boasting of his succulent salad.

“You and your family,” Mrs. Solanki says, “you are Keralans?”

“Yes, we are Keralites.”

“Ah yes. Kera-lights.”

They are strangers, and for the next ten months, they will be living together. This fact becomes suddenly, bluntly apparent, dragging the conversation to a stop. Mr. Solanki stuffs another samosa in his mouth, and for a moment there is only the sound of diligent chewing.

“You have a son, I think,” Anju says.

Enlivened, Mrs. Solanki reaches for the picture frame on the elephant-ankle tabletop. The photo features a bored-looking boy in cap and gown, holding his diploma as he would a lunch tray. Mr. Solanki’s hand rests on his shoulder, and Mrs. Solanki is smiling so hard that her expression seems almost bestial in its baring of teeth.

“That was Rohit’s high school graduation,” Mr. Solanki says. “He was attending Princeton—”

“He is still attending Princeton,” Mrs. Solanki corrects. “He is simply taking a year off.”

“To study at another place?” Anju asks.

“No, it is the fashion with children here, taking time off. As they say, to ‘find’ themselves.” Using her fingers, Mrs. Solanki makes peace signs around the word “find.”

With nothing else to break the silence, Anju replies, “Okay, yes.” And with her left hand, adds a peace sign of her own.