Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

LATER, Anju attempts to use a telephone that seems to belong on its own pedestal, all pearly enamel and brass buttons. She carefully dials the numbers on her phone card, more fearful of harming the phone than fumbling the digits, but Mrs. Solanki waves the card away and tells her to dial regularly. “We have an excellent global plan.”

No crackling phone lines, no curt operators. After three beeps, Anju hears the faint trail of Melvin’s voice: “Hallome?”

“Chachen?”

She can hear and see him perfectly, his hands, thick-knuckled, trying to squeeze her voice from the brown plastic receiver.

“IS IT ANJU? HALLO, ANJU? ANJU MOL!”

“It’s me! I hear you! You don’t have to shout!” It is a suprising relief, speaking in Malayalam rather than navigating the consonants and quicksand vowels of English.

“What’s this?” Melvin says. “So clear! Like you’re across the street.”

“They have a good connection.”

“You reached there safely, Anju? Are you eating well? How is your stomach feeling?”

“I ate, I ate. How are Ammachi and Linno?”

She hears Melvin pause, his speech muffled, probably trying to persuade Linno to pick up the phone. “Linno is taking a bath. Did you give them those dolls?”

Anju looks at the sculpture within the niche next to her, a crystal bird magically infused with swirls of indigo and fuschia ink within its outstretched wings.

“Anju? The dolls?”

“Yes, Chachen, they loved them.”

LIKE A WELCOMING COMMITTEE, Anju’s two suitcases are awaiting her in the guest room, an awkward pair of plastic visitors in the pulled-silk surroundings. The measurements of the bed are a mystery to her, expansive enough for three adults but no higher than her shin, a height that seems customized for a child. The dresser, bookshelf, and desk are all a glossy dark brown, and marigold curtains collect in pools on the carpet.

Mrs. Solanki drapes a thick white towel over the back of a chair and a smaller towel on top of this, both stitched with the letter S . “Over there is your private bathroom,” Mrs. Solanki says, “and you’ll love the showerhead. It has the best water pressure in the whole house.”

In the shower, Anju finds herself endlessly shocked by needles of water so fierce and hot that she is forced to shield her breasts with her arms and turn her back against the onslaught. At home she bathed with bucket and cup, savoring the slow fall of fresh water as it seeped across her scalp and over her shoulders. Here, the showerhead treats her as though she is a grease-grimed pan; the scouring leaves her skin a surprised pink. But the soap is beautiful, a translucent ovoid of green, striped with blades of deeper green within. She inhales and inhales its kiwi sweetness. On impulse, she licks the soap, then vigorously wipes the chemical taint from her tongue. For all her achievements, she sometimes feels like a person of unparalleled stupidity.

Entrenched between tasseled bed cushions, she lies wide awake. Is it lunchtime back home? She pictures a pair of hands washing beneath the wobbly pump at the side of the house, rinsing the street from one’s chappals and feet before stepping inside. Back home. But they are not back, her family, they are moving forward, on another orbit, divided from her not only by miles but by time.

Anju rises from bed and sits by her open suitcase as she unpacks her belongings. From a cloth bag embossed with the words PRINCESS TAILOR SHOP, she withdraws a red sketchbook, its spine coming loose within beige cloth tape, its corners worn.

Along the inside of the cover is signed L. Vallara .

The writing is precise and sharp, and instantly Anju remembers her sister at thirteen years old, her right arm under the table, her tongue between her teeth, her left hand laboring to bring the alphabet to paper. Lines she had mastered for years, unraveling in a hand that would not obey.

Anju fingers the pages that crackle upon turning; she has memorized the sketches on each side. Beginning at the end, she finds a few studies of diapered babies squatting, crawling, sitting, all wearing oversized bifocals. At the bottom of the page, in thick, swirly letters: Frames & Optics . On another page, a peacock with its carnivalesque tail spread around the words Sari Palace . And above the peacock: You Are What You Wear!

Earlier in the book, the drawings lose their words and become messier, lines more frayed, figures in movement. There is a sketch of a coconut cutter, ankles crossed around a palm trunk, a knife between his teeth as he wrestles a coconut above him. Next to this, a magnified rendering of the torso, the tense chest muscles, the strain of a single cord in the throat, a body shorn of excess. All this from the scratches of her sister’s pencil. A live current of talent runs through Linno’s body, and yet Anju never held her in awe, as it felt strange to hold her sister at a distance. Now, with so many miles between them, this book in her hands, she can and she does.

On the first page of the book is a sketch of Anju studying, the weft of her braid tightly drawn, scattered with highlights from the gleam of a nearby lamp. Every shadow obeys the logic of light. Her arms encircle an open book on a table, her nose near the gutter, something selfish about the pose.

Alone in my new room , she thinks, I came to a crossroads .

Turning to Linno’s signature, Anju takes a pencil from her bag and, pressing gently, erases the L from L. Vallara .

Which she replaces with an A .

HE MALAYALA MANORAMA . At the Kottayam offices, the newspaper is printed and posted to homes as far away as Toronto and Singapore, Berlin and Mumbai, stuffed into mailboxes, smacked onto counters, soggied with potato peels, saved in cupboards even when the new Manorama arrives.

Subscribers in Dubai run their fingers along the captions that tell of yet another family suicide, this one in Kollam, below a picture so underexposed the bodies look charred. Readers in Indianapolis drag pens down the marriage ads, seeking spousal security in four sentences that involve birthplace, complexion, creed, and degree. And everyone, especially those overseas, lingers in the obituary section if only to recognize the name of an old classmate, a former friend, a distant neighbor who has been pressed like an ageless leaf between the pages of a memory.

At the time of Anju’s scholarship announcement, the newspaper reaches about nine million people worldwide. One of them is a woman by the name of Bird. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, with a rotating cast of subletters who unknowingly pay the majority of the rent. Bird used to feel guilty about bamboozling her roommates, who are usually in their twenties, pale and unfettered, wishing to dive into the fresh waters of independence. But now, at fifty, Bird reasons that she is simply transplanting an Eastern custom for the betterment of Western society. These youths should be taking care of their elders, and Bird is reaping her due.

The current subletter, a long-haired blonde named Gwen, is an avid cook. Often she leaves a quiche Lorraine or a stockpot of chili in the fridge, the smells dangling in the air like unattainable bait. And though Gwen never shares her food, she makes Bird promise to share some of her recipes, for lack of anything else to discuss when they scoot around each other in the kitchen. “I bet you have tons of great currying secrets,” Gwen says.

In truth, Bird weeps too easily at onions and every curry needs an onion. She loses all patience with dicing. The moat of blood leaking from a hunk of meat makes her retch. Cooking has never been her forte, and she relies heavily on Tandoori Express takeout, two blocks away. Yes, she has secrets, but none to do with currying.