Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

From the moment Birdie Kamalabhai appeared onstage, the story seemed to close in around Melvin; he felt enveloped by her plight. Neera was her character’s name. Her costars were also talented, even the teenage boy playing the servant, his youth apparent in the high pitch of his voice. His costume stripped him of seriousness, a cross between a genie and the Air India mascot, with a bulbous, ruby-colored turban atop his head.

But no matter which actor was next to Birdie Kamalabhai, it was she who possessed the stage. She was beautiful in her desperation, fumbling as she made the Christmas Star, quivering as she spoke: “It is all nonsense. This Christmas will be perfect. I will do everything I can think of to please you, my husband! I will sing for you, dance for you….” And when she danced for her husband, fear swirled and cycloned through her body, gathering to her all the sympathy in the audience, who quietly condoned her leaving of insensitive Tobin. This from a rigorously pious audience who shrank from the very thought of divorce like mosquitoes from marigolds. Contrary to their social codes, they forgave Neera, and it was all due to Birdie Kamalabhai. Never, until now, had Melvin witnessed such miracles of the theater, far more wondrous than those of cinematic special effects.

As Melvin watched the play, another one unfolded in his mind, starring Birdie and himself. He imagined her wearing the kind of flowery muumuus that his mother wore at bedtime, but uneasy with the idea, he mentally redressed his Birdie in a pale cotton sari. The fluidity of her movement translated into the fluidity of her daily chores, singing as she swept the meager floor, straightening the rug with her outstretched toe, his tiny flat thrumming with her graceful energy.

It was at that moment, mid-daydream, that Servant came bustling along Melvin’s row. With his performance over, he was joining the audience, all the while staring at Birdie Kamalabhai as if a single blink might destroy the mirage. Lost within his trance, Servant failed to remove his oversized hat when taking the seat directly in front of Melvin.

At first, Melvin tried edging from side to side, but the view of Birdie Kamalabhai was eclipsed by the hat. He tried to make a few hissing noises, but Servant did not turn. Melvin waited until intermission to tap him on the shoulder and whisper, “Eh! Your thotti is blocking me!”

Servant turned, putting a protective hand to his hat. They stared at each other, and gradually Melvin was filled with a thick, viscous terror, a slow-growing regret. An English phrase came automatically to his lips, one that he used often at the Oasis Hotel: “Excuse me, miss.”

Servant removed her hat. Underneath, hiding all along, was a large, black bun.

A bit wounded, the lady asked if Melvin really thought her hat looked like a bucket. He quickly said no. A fruit maybe, from a distance, but not a bucket. He was unsure of his words, focused instead on the mole at the outer corner of her eye. She said that she was replacing a man who had previously played the servant role, but to mask her gender, she had spent two nights crafting the hat from plaster and paper. She had even visited a fabric store in Ernakulam for the red glitter, which, to her frustration, continues to turn up in the strangest of places, a red fleck in her eyebrow, another between her toes. Very nice glitter, he assured her. A manly glitter.

At this, she smiled. The white of her teeth broke the dark.

As people around them shifted and stretched, Melvin and the lady remained chatting. Her name was Gracie. Later, he would find it difficult to remember the specifics of their conversation, though he did recall asking her if she enjoyed acting.

“I do, only I wish I had more time to improve.” She looped her arm over the back of her chair and rested her chin on her knuckles. “You should’ve seen me when I started. So nervous, so distracted. You would be too if you had to rehearse with Birdie Kamalabhai.”

He asked her why she had continued, if she found it difficult.

“Because my mother disapproved.” She gave him a rueful smile. “But then I began to like being up there.”

Here she paused, her brow furrowed as she scraped a speck of glitter from her hand. Her silence made him fear that he had said something wrong, but she was only thinking of her answer. “To be up there is to be natural. Free.”

“Free from what?”

She turned to him. “You can see it in Birdie’s performance. As Neera. Isn’t she beautiful to watch?”

Melvin nodded but said nothing, worried that his clumsy questions might destroy her reflections. He felt privileged by the degree of her honesty and amazed that she hadn’t gotten up and left by now. In the past, interactions with women generally caused him to suffer a barrage of symptoms — rapid heartbeat, loss of humor, profuse perspiration. He treated women the same way that he treated the manicured section of a public garden, appreciating the whole, respectfully sidling around the borders.

He lay in bed that night thinking of the moment when Gracie smiled at him, and how his gut had tightened. She had a slight overbite (not bucktoothed) that nudged against her top lip in such a way that made him ponder tasting it. Until now, he had entertained thoughts like this only about actresses far beyond his reach, as it seemed safer, somehow, to confine his fantasies to the impossible.

He kept the program, and from the cast of characters, he learned her full name. Gracie Kuruvilla . He brought up the name to his father.

“You’ve been making a relationship with her?” Appachen asked, incredulous, scandalized.

This was the most intimate question that ever hung in the air between them. Melvin shook his head.

They were in the sitting room, Appachen in his haggard armchair, Melvin standing over him. Even from that vantage, Appachen held dominion over the room, but Melvin did not want that kind of authority, the kind that put distance between father and family. Ever since he was small, Melvin often acted as liason between his father and his aunts, even if they were all in the same room. The women sent Melvin to ask Appachen questions, usually Are you hungry yet? or Do you want a glass of lime water? , to which Appachen answered with impatience, as if the workings of his appetite were common knowledge. On the few occasions that Appachen entered the kitchen, he immediately became the eye of a hurricane, the women halting their conversation to flurry around him and make him tea or snacks. Sometimes it seemed that he simply wanted company, but the attention made him uncomfortable, so he went back to his armchair and waited for the snacks.

And when, as now, Appachen deemed himself above certain affairs, he said, “Talk to your mother,” and then closed his eyes. A year later, they would find him that way, dead in his armchair. They would also learn that he had been dead for three hours, but having assumed that he was thinking about something important, no one had wanted to bother him. For now, Melvin could tell that the old man was mentally transported to a happier place, where sons remained boys, where young women were never discussed, where his cup ran over with arrack.

A WEEK LATER, Gracie’s father agreed to the match. The family was thrilled, he said, to accept the proposal.

Melvin’s family had expected a bit of hedging, followed by a rejection. Ammachi’s extensive research, which uncovered the girl’s denomination, church name, house name, street name, age, approximate height, and enough features for a police sketch, indicated that Gracie was from a fairly well-to-do family. Her father was the head of Kuruvilla Coir, presiding over a factory that wove the fibers from coconut shells into rugs and house mats. She was once betrothed to Abraham Chandy, the son of another upstanding family, who had reneged on the deal after Abraham’s father found a better prospect in Mercy. But at least Gracie’s family could find her an engineer or a professor. What would they want with a Bombay bellhop? Melvin wondered. He became convinced that he had unwittingly left an impression on Gracie from their only encounter, an indelible mark, as she had upon him. Maybe hers was a liberal-minded family who allowed her the husband of her choosing. Rich people could afford everything, so why not liberalism?